Is Good friend.tech, the crypto social media app, a rip-off?

Keep in mind after we had been inundated with crypto commercials starring Matt Damon, main sports activities league sponsorships, and drawings of apes? For these within the mainstream, cryptocurrency appears just about useless. Nonetheless, the crypto group remains to be very a lot alive on-line. Traders, speculators, and scammers have been holding out throughout this lengthy bear market, hoping that the following large crypto undertaking will come alongside and switch their dimes again into {dollars}.

Many suppose they’ve discovered that very undertaking in Good friend.tech, which has gone viral within the crypto group over the previous few days. A leaked database exhibits that greater than 101,000 customers have signed up because the invite-only beta model of the app launched on Aug. 10. 

And, after all, as a result of that is crypto, creating wealth is the issue right here — and Good friend.tech is already pulling in thousands and thousands. In response to CoinDesk, over the previous 24 hours alone, Good friend.tech has seen greater than $1.04 million in transaction charges, producing simply over $709,000 in income. Because it launched lower than two weeks in the past, Good friend.tech has made round $25 million.

So, what’s Good friend.tech?

Merely put, Good friend.tech is a mobile-based social media platform with a cryptocurrency twist. The app markets itself as “{the marketplace} in your mates” on its web site. Very like different, non-crypto social media platforms which can be in beta — like BlueSky — Good friend.tech requires customers to have an invitation code from different customers with the intention to enroll.

Good friend.tech mainly gives every person with their very own Telegram-like chat group. To ensure that others to enter a person’s non-public group chat, they should purchase shares in that person. If and after they determine to depart that group chat, they will promote these shares to different customers. 

Principally, Good friend.tech is streamlining the previous course of by which Twitter influencers would hawk their very own private memecoins to their followers by attaching it on to their identification and offering a premium characteristic, on this case, entry to a non-public chat channel. It has all the opposite basic schemes often linked to crypto tasks as properly, similar to a fee-sharing mechanism and airdrops to reward customers.

Up to now, some crypto influencers have publicized that they’ve earned dozens in ether. One ether is price roughly $1,670 as of the publication of this text.

What are a few of the points?

It is a crypto undertaking, so know that on the coronary heart of this can be a product that encourages highly-volatile hypothesis. Moreover, whereas some will definitely make cash off this, like most merchandise within the crypto house, it’s unlikely to be these exterior of the tightly-knit crypto-influencer circles.

There are another causes for concern that some critics have identified as properly.

The Good friend.tech app requires customers to hyperlink their Ethereum pockets with their account on X, the platform previously often called Twitter. This created two points. For one, some users realized that this gave the Good friend.tech account sure permissions to their X account — like the power to submit and retweet on their behalf. The second problem is that, when the Good friend.tech database was leaked, its contents publicly linked an X account to the crypto pockets it signed up with, one thing that the person could not have made public earlier than.

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Good friend.tech has been described as a decentralized social Web3 app and, with all these buzzwords lumped in collectively, one may be positive there’s quite a lot of inorganic hype behind this one as properly. Like with the overwhelming majority of those crypto tasks, there’s possible behind-the-scenes coordination with varied large names within the house on what to purchase and when to promote, which provides them fairly a bonus over the common person.

Is that this a rip-off?

Properly, once more, this can be a crypto undertaking. Within the opinion of many critics who’ve coated the business, the complete crypto house is a rip-off.

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Scammers have already descended on Good friend.tech after seeing how shortly it has blown up. A number of phishing campaigns have already spread, making an attempt to trick customers into signing up for a pretend airdrop scheme which might then successfully drain their crypto wallets.

After which there’s the difficulty of who’s behind Good friend.tech. The group is fully nameless — as in, the precise identification of who’s operating the app is unknown. It’s in all probability a good suggestion to know who, precisely, is behind a undertaking if one is to speculate a major sum of cash into it. 

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Nonetheless, some throughout the crypto group have already looked into the historical past of the recognized on-line pseudonyms behind Good friend.tech and there are already crimson flags. Members of the group behind Good friend.tech had been allegedly additionally behind a undertaking known as Kosetto, which offered wearable NFT stickers. Kosetto was hyped similarly in the direction of the tip of 2022, encouraging customers to spam their referral codes on social media with the intention to win NFTs and spend money on their a lot bigger concept to come back sooner or later. Then, abruptly, in early 2023, the undertaking was deserted, with out discover to customers who had invested. Kosetto’s social media accounts haven’t been up to date since January.

Nonetheless, in contrast to after they had been engaged on Kosetto, the group from Good friend.tech seems to have acquired some monetary backing for his or her newest undertaking. Good friend.tech has received a round of seed funding from the crypto VC agency Paradigm, one thing which may ease the minds of customers investing within the social media app.

Who else has Paradigm invested in? FTX, the failed crypto alternate based by Sam Bankman-Fried who at present sits in jail whereas he awaits trial for a number of costs of wire fraud, securities fraud, and cash laundering. The crypto-centric VC fund invested $278 million within the alternate, which it later advised buyers was now nugatory.