> who in this 'crypto world' would be stupid enough

Never attribute to malice what can be explained by stupidity, and never underestimate just how stupid a person can be.

Honestly, I tried really hard to attribute this to stupidity. But this level of stupidity and negligence is really beyond my understanding.

Then you haven't spent nearly enough time reading the posts in cryptocurrency forums.

It wouldn't take more than a couple hours of skimming to completely recalibrate your expectations.

Hanlon's Law

First part is Hanlon's Razor, second part is Einstein:

> "Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."

Why would he do that when he'd make more on the actual token sale?

Well he just walked away with $500k and got more press than he could have ever paid for.

I've never heard of Enigma before today, hell I still don't have a clue what they are going to actually do besides an ICO, but I know they have just implemented best practices security and it's a safe bet to make money. I think PG calls this a submarine.

> got more press than he could have ever paid for

This is very clever. When the theft loss is dismal compared to the money raised, it only gets more press and more people buying the coin!

The profit from the token sale goes into a foundation setup to oversee the project, not the founding team's pocket.

> The profit from the token sale goes into a foundation setup to oversee the project ... [truncated]

... that is controlled by the founders and could presumably be used for whatever they'd like. The usual approach is to create two companies. One a shell to own the ICO itself, and the second a tech services company that does development for the shell corp.

So it ends up something like:

"We definitely need the expertise of ICO founder Mr. X. Let's hire his consulting company to update the CSS on our web page at $1,000/hour..."

This is the main reason the traditional VC model works so well. You can't get rich unless the VC's make money.

You're kidding right? Founders/employees take "money off the table", even if the companies haven't generated a cent in profit.

Employees and founders typically can't sell shares (Except to the VCs, at a price the VCs set) until the company goes public, or is wildly successful.

They do get paid salaries, but undergo audits... To make sure that the 10 million dollar round didn't go straight to the CTO's Bahaman yaht fund. These audits are typically not done by the founders.

With an ICO, all bets are off. There's no reporting requirements, the founders hire their own bookkeepers, and the equity holders have no rights with respect to the governance of the firm.

You seem to be positing an absolute: that an ICO can't behave transparently by nature. Which isn't true. ICO and transparency aren't mutually exclusive.

No, but there's a huge difference in the amount of oversight token holders have on an ICO, and the amount of oversight that VCs have on a startup.

It's certainly possible to structure an ICO in such a way that token holders will get board seats, proper auditing, etc, but I've yet to see one that is.

getting 500k from a stupid hack or 30mio without...ur theory doesnt make any sense.

It might be that there's a paralysis amongst many people in choosing a password safe and then starting to use strong, unique passwords with each account. What do you recommend to your parents and family, for example? I use 1Password, but do people with more basic requirements than team/client password storage feel that they can justify a paid service?