OneGram’s ICO promises a cryptocurrency backed by Gold, stored at Dubai International Airport. At first a fantastic idea, after a close look, a rather shady set-up. Today I’m going to have a closer look at who’s behind the ICO to try to determine the credibility of this project. I’m not going to pass judgement - this is just a collection of what I’ve found.
OneGram Trail
- Website onegram.org since December 2016
- Twitter account OneGramNews since February 2017
- Facebook page OneGramCoin since February 2017
- Github Organization OneGram with first commit on 18th February 2017, no code or technical documentation. Apparently a Matt Mili takes care of this.
- Reddit OneGramOfficial
- Forum Bitcointalk.org
The OneGram team manages the OGC protocol. GoldGuard runs the vault for physical gold. The two teams work closely together to ensure that the entire solution is seamless, well supported. - source
OGC Token
- PoS (Proof Of Stake)
- Maximum supply of 12,400,786 OGC
- ICO on 21. May (up to 120 days)
- 10% Premium to cover cost
- Paid for with Gold purchased trough Goldguard (paid for by Bitcoin or Wire)
Nearly 50 percent of the offering has been committed, Mohammed said. Tabarak Investment Bank, one of the largest in Dubai, will sell 100 million euros to its clients, while a similar amount is expected to be taken up by seven high networth individuals in OneGram’s network. source
Website registration
Domain: onegram.org
registered on 2016-12-06
by Mohammed Khan, 334153 Dubai, AE
Mohammed Khan might be a relative of Ibrahim Khan who’s listed as CEO of OneGram.
Email: onegrampress@gmail.com
21mil.com
Domain: 21mil.com
registered on 2016-11-12
WHOIS privacy, Panama
The email listed on this site apparently belongs to Ferdous Bhai (Twitter), listed as Technical Team Lead of OneGram and CEO of 21MIL.
Email: ferdousbhai@protonmail.com
Matt Mili
Matthew Mili is listed as OneGram’s Full Stack Developer.
Domain: mattmili.com
registered on 2016-12-16
WHOIS privacy, Panama
Email: mattmili@protonmail.com
Goldguard
Gold Guard FZCO is launching next week, it is registered in Dubai, with a precious metals license to trade gold at the Dubai Airport Free Zone (DAFZ). We have agreements with ABX and Loomis. All the informations will be public, gold supply is audited by PwC and Bitpay did their due diligences on Gold Guard too. We provided all the right informations to all our partners including AML and KYC documents.
The first step to participate in the ICO is to register with GoldGuard and purchase gold. Then the gold can be redeemed for OGC via the same platform. There is a fee of 10% charged during the purchase; this fee is expected as by purchasing OGC, the investor is not only purchasing an asset that offers the spot value of gold but also the future value of additional gold to be purchased from transaction fees. - source
Each OGCs are backed by 1g of gold (based on the spot price of your purchase). We are buying gold with our partners ABX and Goldguard instantly. Goldguard exchange is also doing the integration of Bitpay, so you’ll be able to buy physical gold with bitcoins and redeem your OGC tokens. - source
Physical gold is purchased through ABX and physically delivered within 3 days through Loomis and stored with Loomis in Dubai. There are no gold certificates because this is not ETF’s this is physically owned goldABX will provide us supply connfirmation of how many grams of gold we have purchased and own.. This will tally up to financial records of payments made to ABX
which will be verified by PWC and the Shariah Advisory Audit. - source
The gold bullion will be stored in high security vaults in the Dubai Airport Free Zone (DAFZA) on behalf of the Client by GoldGuard.
Domain: goldguard.com
registered on 2013-05-16
in Kirkland, WA (+971 4 4489926)
Email: support@goldguard.com
No address, no names, first blog post on 2017-03-28. There’s a staging site (testing) at http://goldguard.bywazzupa.com/. There is also no record of the company in the DMCC business directory.
OneGram in the news
- OneGram & Dubai Trading Platform In $500M ‘Gold-Backed’ Cryptocurrency
- Dubai firm launches world’s first gold backed digital currency
- Dubai firm looks to raise $500 million via digital tokens for new payments system
- OneGram Links with Tabarak Investment Capital to Promote its Digital Currency
OneGram is an intriguing project but not the only to offer crypto backed by gold. There’s been a lot of doubt about the authenticity so do your own research before you invest.
Update: 2023-03-21
Looks like this never took off:
- Website stuck in 2018
- Last commit on Github 2020: https://github.com/OneGramTech/onegram-core
- Twitter is dead https://twitter.com/OneGramNews