- 11B tokens unaccounted for
- The price of Apollo dumps drastically upon listing
- Appointment of John McAfee as the new chairman of the foundation sets a new path for the project
Editor’s note: Since we published this article, we have been contacted by Steve McCullah of the Apollo Foundation. He offered to provide the foundation’s perspective on these events and correct some errors he believes re are in the article. We have asked him to provide this information, and will update the article if appropriate. As you read, please bear in mind that much of the content of this article is based on numbers and details provided in this Medium post on the events.
The Apollo Foundation is steeped in controversy after a member of the community raised some concerns about the Foundation’s token reserves in the aftermath of a recent listing.
According to the Apollo white paper, during the Coin Distribution Event (CDE), 53% of the supply was assigned to the public and private sale. That is 53% of 31B which is 15.9B. An Airdrop of up to 10% of the total supply accounts for another 3B, leaving 12B under the management of the foundation.
During the Crypto Depository Receipt (CDR), investors were receiving funds from two addresses which are both – presumably – owned by the Apollo Foundation.
The Math doesn’t add up
When you use the NXT tool you will be able to check the transactions made by the Genesis account, APL-MRCC-2YLS-8M54–3CMAJ. A genesis account usually has a negative balance whereby any amount deposited to that address is burned. On 9/6/2018 you will find out that this account received a payment of 8.8B thus indicating that the APL foundation had burned unsold coins.
After the burn, the total supply was 21B (31B -8.8), and the community had had 10.1B (7.1B + 3B NXT holder), thus 10.1B out of 21B translates to 48%. This means the foundation monitors 52% of the supply but never reveal the address where they are holding this 11B.
About Apollo
Apollo tokens can be traded with privately on both the decentralized exchange of the foundation and on external exchanges as well. The Apollo asset system lets you trade assets 100% privately through encrypted messages by utilizing the Olympus protocol which conceals your IP address and the transaction carrying the message.
After APL got listed on the 1st exchange, its price dumped from $0.006 to $0.002 in 24 hours which is surprisingly a significant margin especially when the CDE ended with a price of $0.005. So in those 24 hours, no one made a profit except for the people with free coins. But still, from the above calculations, 11B FREE coins are unaccounted for.
Is Apollo a Scam?
It is not certain whether the founders are responsible for dumping the coins. But that’s just it, a lot of what happened is unclear, and as bad as 2018 has been for many projects, a coin dumping by two thirds of its price immediately upon listing is pretty extraordinary.
On October 2nd, the foundation appointed John McAfee as its new chairman. McAfee applauded Apollo by tweeting;
“I very seldom do things of this nature because of the time drain in my limited remaining years. However, I did so because of the management at Apollo was like nothing I have seen in the blockchain world. Professional, produced, on-time and one of the best companies in the blockchain world.”
He also added, “I am explaining this because people always say that I promote things that I believe in. I believe strongly in Apollo.”
All in all, it is safer to stay away and wait until the dust clears a little before we can trust Apollo foundation after this.
