ICO Witchcraft: Five Steps to Summon a Disappeared CEO

ICO’s started off with a bang and they are still booming. Inevitably, many of them will fail to bring to value back to the inventors, for various reasons: misjudged market, failed product, wrong marketing, insufficient communication of the team, the list goes on and at the end of it there is also the swindle play.

As an investor you want to know how your money is performing. In the time between an ICO and the expected confirmation that this is a profitable project dwells an uncertainty, peculiarly different from the traditional investment vehicles, for it is entirely feasible to organize an ICO in nearly perfect anonymity.

It is important to note that all projects have glitches and hiccups, whilst the successful ones overcome them. The good projects will explain these issues; but what to do when you have invested with own dear money and the team is silent as a lamb?

Fight fire with fire.

Step 0
You have tried all possible means to contact the ICO team, but they are silent.
Note: If this is a one person team, a single CEO, it is possible that that person for whatever reason (e.g. an accident) has no means to respond. The next five steps are also meant for the benefits of the CEO.

Step 1 - Announcement
You are not alone; there are hundreds or thousands of investors, probably organized into a forum (Telegram, Slack, Twitter etc.). Join your forces and advertise publicly a headhunt call for the ICO team. What you need to obtain is the physical identity and contact details; include links to forums so the investors can be contacted. The Internet is wide and there are many ways to obtain such information: blockchain tracking, via social media, actually knowing the person, registry investigation, the list goes on.
Note: The discussion forum is likely managed by the disappeared ICO team. Make sure you can still contact the other investors even when this channel is closed. Maybe open an independent channel as a backup for everyone to join.

Step 2 - Search
Someone, a skilled hacker, a colleague of the CEO or a PI has the needed information and posts this on the forum, but likely it doesn’t come free. The investors create a reward pool and once the information is confirmed (the identity is indeed valid), the reward gets released.
Note: To avoid a false information claim, place the reward pool in a reputable escrow. If this pool is assembled on a blockchain, anyone can confirm who contributed how much; one would expect the bigger investors to chip in more.

Step 3 - Contact
The forum of investors selects a spokesman; I would make sense that this is someone with a large stake in the ICO or someone who gets paid for the successful negotiation. The spokesman contacts the ICO team with a list of claims and mandate to negotiate. In Step 3, the contact is no more the elusive connection from Step 0, but a direct link.
Note: At this point, you still don’t know the reason for the silence. It is entirely feasible that there are honest reasons for it, so hold the witch-hunt.

Step 4 - Negotiation
Negotiations with the ICO team will dictate the next step.
Note: The proceedings should be made available to the public and the investors, to avoid the very same mistake that triggered this investigation.

Step 5 - Rescue
Depending on the outcome of the negotiation, the solution, which ultimately is recovery of the funds, can have different forms: resuming the project, return of funds, handover of project to a new team, prosecution. All these, of course, all legal options backed by justice, void of darknet intimidation, blackmailing and ransom. As an example, with the recent ban of ICO’s in China, there is an immediate call for return of funding; ignoring this on the basis of being outside of the jurisdiction may well prove short-sighted, as the consequences will backlash. In addition to that, it will cause havoc to the karma.
Note: In an extreme case the ICO team has altogether vanished, died or has irretrievably lost the funding. Still good to know what happened.

In conclusions, as an investor in crypto, you have benefited from the freedom of crypto financing, and the flipside of that is the responsibility. No one but you will guard your money.