Thanks for seperating this out, not fair to the lodge for this topic to hijack that one.

Yes but he did not do due diligence.

Lost a lot of respect for Doug from this and it's going to be hard for him to recover. He's lost all credibility with crypto and its going to be tough for him to continue his shtick of calling out scammers in future videos. He always seemed like one of the good guys but if the past two months taught us anything it's that people you thought were legit and sincere just turned out to be scum bags. Disappointing.

Statement video was a bit of a let down. Isnt part of the deal of being an ambassador taking it on the chin? Whether you feel you're equal parts a victim and truly had no way of knowing doesn't change much imo. Was expecting more contrition.

thanks for doing this, obviously there's a bunch of silliness going on here like declaring you should have personally verified assets lmao and you being here can help clear things up




how did they pitch/approach you?

what was your specific role beyond blurbs in your videos?

were you personally invested in this and/or put your own money on the site?

on a 1-10 scale how well did you understand the business model? how does that compare to other things you've labeled scams (ie how deep was your knowledge on say bitconnect compared to this)

your resignation feels like a simple pr move in the sense that they likely weren't going to continue paying for an ambassador for a defunct business and almost feels like washing your hands of this now prevents you from helping people reclaim funds?

do you feel like there were signs that were ignored/not recognized at the time?

what did they communicate to you when they first paused withdrawals - what were the follow up conversations regarding this?

you mentioned legal advice when resigning, was this just being extra precautious or were there other things where a resignation could harm you?

in general, what are your thoughts on the whole manner - i don't think you've done anything more other than perhaps had some poor judgement over what was pretty clearly a rug pull (ie you offered prop bets against this when you signed up - that should have been a red flag to you imo that it was even a discussion at all)

the thought of watching a monetized video of you explaining this isn't very appealing so i hope you'll do your post mortem of the event here instead

Just because this situation has arisen does not mean that I did not do my own due diligence. I talked to a wide variety of people who had good things to say about Mark Lamb/CoinFlex.

I have been told repeatedly that I didnt do my due diligence from people who

- Dont know who I talked to
- Dont know what those people said
- Dont know how long I spent before agreeing to a deal

So at this point, I do feel like I did the best job on due diligence I reasonably could do and it came back positive across the board.

What have I done here where I have turned out to be a scumbag? I have resigned from this company and stand to make less than $0 from my deal I signed with them. I own none of this company, I dont understand how you can come to this conclusion.

"Guys, I did my due diligence, it just wasn't thorough or correct"

What I find curious is that Doug has three main YouTube channels; one with 341k subscribers, one with 165k subscribers (specifically titled Doug Polk Crypto), and one with only 43.2k subscribers; and his resignation/explanation video is only posted on the channel with the fewest number of subscribers.

You shilled a shitcoin/ponzi and you're followers that listened got burned. The fact you don't think that's scumbag behavior is quite something.

You really should stop saying "I made $0 from my deal". It comes off really cringey.

Hes trying to salvage whatever positive image he has left. Honestly if he didn't make a career out of calling out scummy behavior he probably would've survived this. I'm sure the dnegs type fan boys will still like him but he's lost most people. He always seemed like a real one so it's disappointing

I'd love to know how much his followers lost listening to him. Good chance Doug was given an allocation in exchange for being an ambassador and never put a dollar of his own at risk

fair point but this was an opportunity to actually lay out those three things people don't know about instead of stating that they are unknown

Doug you assume no fault at all? Would you do it all the same again?

Seriously.

Doug we get that you'd be a net loser combining your earnings from being sponsored but you did make money to pitch that coin.

I met coinflex through mutual contacts through poker.

My role at coinflex was to promote them via my content/social media. I played no role in the company outside of that whatsoever (as I recall).

I have never owned part of coinflex, I have had my own money on the site in some of their products.

The 1-10 scale is a good question. I am admittedly not a trader. I have however done a good bit of research on defi. As they are an exchange/focus more on derivatives, it was a little tough for me to understand a lot of the different aspects of the business. I would say I understood most of their offering in the 7-8ish range, I spent a good portion of time trying to learn a lot of it, but I also do not think I have the mind for trading and am not familiar with the lingo (which makes it more tough).

Bitconnect, by comparison, was a clear scam. This is a cryptocurrency derivatives exchange, that is nothing inherently wrong/scammy about that. I still think some of their ideas were good in theory. The problem was they allowed someone to have a massive uncollateralized position that has put into jeapordy the solvency of the business, and they currently cannot processpayouts.

My resignation came into play the moment they paused withdrawals. I dont think thats an acceptable action for an exchange to take, regardless of whether they would pay me or not, I am not going to represent companies that, in my opinion, are not coming through on their stated advertisements (in this case, a fully collateralized stablecoin issuing yield).

The sick thing is, I cant think of a single sign along the way. We had CoinFlex for an event at the lodge just a few weeks ago, and I got to meet the entire team. People were really excited and nice, and we spent a couple of days together. Its hard to believe it has gone this direction just a few short weeks later.

The first communication we had about paused withdrawal: One day in the afternoon I recieved an avalanche of messages from different people saying coinflex withdrawals were paused. At this point I asked them if this was true, they said yes. They did not give me even a warning this was going to happen. There were a few followup conversations, I dont want to get into exact messages and things of that nature, but I can say that I did my best to try and understand the situation fully before making my statement. That said, I still learned the vast majority of information through the exact same public channels as everyone else. I primarily got to hear about the why aftewards, not the what beforehand.

As for the legal side of things, I just wanted to make sure I did things right here. I wanted to resign in accordance to my contact, and then make sure what I said was not going to land me in any trouble. Past that I just wanted to be able to speak honestly with my audience, the most important thing for me is to be able to share what happened. I care a lot about my name in this community, and even though it is -ev to make a statement, I felt it was worth it.

My video is monetized? Ill take that down asap. Appreciate the good well thought out questions.

Again, that is not true.

This would be like saying if you lost a hand of poker, you didnt study it thoroughly or correctly. Sometimes you make your best decision available to you at the time and it doesnt work out.

thanks for responding, don't know if it's monetized, just assumed it would be by default

Its posted on that channel because the bulk of the promotion of coinflex occured on that channel, and thus it is the most relevant to that audience.

If I was going to try and hide this story I wouldnt be issuing a statement at all or be online responding to questions about the matter.

So what did you do for due diligence?

It’s hard to believe you when you don’t provide any concrete points other than “trust me”

doug, just wanted to say that i tend to believe you since you did not profit from it.

The problem here now is, I dont want to put the people who I talked to on the stands now to defend my decision.

Imagine if when you asked someone for a reference about someone else, if when things blew up you put their name out there and said "I DID IT BECAUSE OF THAT GUY". Im not willing to do that to the people who talked to me in good faith.

I can say the company has a good number of succesful/prominent investors and good references from well established names in the cryptocurrency space. Past that im not willing to put other people in the line of fire.

In the future, I think im only going to promote my own companies and/or companies that cannot cause significant harm. I would have to think about it exactly. One thing that really sucked here, is having to deal with the blowback every day from decisions being made I was not a part of or informed on. I had to just sit there and wait to see what the new story is going to be that could damage my brand. Dont see myself signing up for that again.

I will survive this. What especially like about this is that somehow in this example I still have the dnegs type fan boys. Would have never seen this post in 2017 lol.

How else would you like me to word this? I have had a plethora of people attack me for having "made money" off of this. I think its an important distinction. And for the record, im not looking for sympathy, just trying to set the record straight.

I remember when Doug started his crypto channel at the end of the 2017 bull run. He disappeared when the bear hit a few months later and didn't return until this recent bull. Hopefully next bull people stop looking up to these influencer shills and grifters and recognize what they are doing.

dnegs fanboys are the best kind of fanboys, just need to spend a cool million each year in buyins to keep their attention