26 Sep Dubious XYO
Today I came across XYO, another crypto startup with dubious claims. (I am sure you are surprised at the concept.) They are in San Diego and say that they combine location and blockchain. Along with the use of an eponymous token. And yes in Feb 2018 they published an article in Medium. See the pretty diagram in page describing their components.
I went to their website and looked at their tech page. See what it says –
“Sorta like GPS, minus the government monopoly”?? Say what??
If you read their whitepaper, they USE GPS. Here is a direct quote – “ XY’s Bluetooth and GPS devices allow everyday consumers to place physical tracking beacons on the things they want to keep track of”. This is not magic. They have a software layer with 4 impressively named parts (see the figure in the Medium article). But none of those actually determine the location of themselves or anything else.
What they are doing on their website is take advantage of the ignorance and bias of some visitors. (Not you eh?) They play up a supposed libertarian ethos that says government and monopoly are bad, as personified by GPS. This is misleading. They need GPS to find locations.
There is more. See this page from a company called Decentric –
See “network that isn’t reliant on GPS”. This is a lie. XYO’s network, as explained above, depends on and sits on top of GPS.
If you want to know more, see a pretty article by Mick West that goes into further gory details. He also points out that Decentric and XYO are tight indeed. They are in the same building. Both are startups. A cynical person (you?) might wonder that they are practically the same firm.
Oh did I forget, XYO has tokens for sale. How encouraging.
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