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The end of MTV
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The end of MTV
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MarcdeKoning - Administrator
Traffic Value: $468,983.12758 Netherlands
30/10/2024
11:16
9.5 years.9.5 years as a CEO of this company. My childhood dreams were destroyed in the process and today, after having to be silent for years, I get to speak out. I however fully understand this news won't be taken in a positive way by everyone, but it will at least give answers and closure. For years I've been thinking about what I'd write when it all came to an end, but it still isn't easy. For years I had to take the loss of face, loss of opportunity, long depressive phases and more, simply because I believe a CEO takes responsibility for whatever goes wrong and gives credit to the team for whatever goes right. If I would have spoken up before, MTV would have also disappeared way sooner and the damage to the investors, the users and the team would have been magnitudes larger. This is why I kept it running with a heavily reduced team, gave the team the time to find new jobs (On the side or altogether) and it allowed me to cut down the costs so we could continue honouring all the cashouts & billables. I became the CEO of this company in June 2015. I was promised the world and more if I managed to fix the company's issues. The first and foremost issue was that the company wasn't a company at all at the time, rather it was a ponzi scheme with $1.4m in debt. Before becoming a CEO I had given Richard O'neill, the previous "CEO", tons of business ideas and even helped work some of them out. This was when I still believed it was a real business at the time. He developed many of my ideas, but never gave me any credit. I was okay with that, since I understood he wanted to be seen as a visionary to get more investments in. It was when I was due to be paid for a $432k investment, when I realised it was a ponzi scheme. Richard told me in PM that he didn't want to pay me, as it would "clog the payout queue for too long and would kill the hype". I at first thought he was joking, but when I realised he wasn't and he "debt swapped" the company, (For those that weren't around at the time, it means instead of cash, you would get shares at heavily inflated values, hoping that you would one day get back to BEP on those) what followed was a depressive phase for me, for 8 months. I had never lost so much money before and it drove me to do a ton of research into the company. I figured the whole thing out and decided I had to get rid of Richard to save the public. I saw the potential of running this as a legitimate business, since there were so many passionate supporters. One of my friends at the time managed to secure a meeting with Carlos, the owner of the business. He met up with Carlos to show him all the proof of Richard being a con artist. He went there, showed the proof, Carlos panicked and instantly wanted to get rid of Richard. But this left him with a new issue.. The issue of not having a CEO to run the business, as he couldn't do it. This is when my friend pitched me for the job and I got hired on the spot. People seemed very happy with me being the new CEO and I remember the company shares going up 300% on the day of being hired. At first it was great and it brought tons of new investors and I was able to turn it into a legitimate business with legitimate earnings, rather than a ponzi scheme. It was however very hard to dig ourselves out of the hole that Richard had left, as he left with most of the balances in crypto and had done no accounting what so ever. In February 2016 I managed to become a millionaire for the first time, through startup investments of my own, trading forex, trading crypto, investing in crowdfunding businesses online.. MTV however wasn't picking up pace. I then decided to give MTV a loan from my personal earnings. This felt natural to me as I considered myself the leader of the company and I saw Elon Musk doing the same at the time.. I poured in around $350-400k into the business, which came out of my crypto portfolio. (This was pretty much all the btc I had) This money was then used to pay the staff, expansion of the company and team and this at first seemed to work well. In December 2016 I was hit with a lot of bad luck and I was down to $5k of personal wealth. (I got scammed) I remember calling my mother to tell her I'd probably have to move back into her house. MTV wasn't able to pay me a salary either.. I had gone from millionaire to zero in a year and that money I put into MTV to keep it going, was never returned to me. Mind you, had I simply kept my money in bitcoin, I would have been extremely wealthy today. In the years after that MTV started doing much better. We had some successful projects and millions were pouring in. This is when something very unexpected happened. Carlos started both messing up and taking money out of accounts without notice/reasoning other than the reason "I'm the owner, I can do what I want". Pretty much every big failure and loss we've seen within MTV in the past decade can be directly contributed to Carlos. -$1.4m lost in paypal? Carlos registered it as a personal account in Spain, rather than a company account offshore. His account got frozen, he told us he had to pay 50% taxes to Spanish authorities, but for some reason the other 50% was never seen within our balances anymore either. -The creditcard solution we had? We had $400k in balances at the time and he thought it was a great idea to spend $250k on a creditcard solution without reading the small letters or talking to any of us about it. The small letters stated that whatever deposits would come in during the first 2 years, would be frozen. Our business model can't sustain that at all, especially given the fact our monthly costs were around $70k/month at the time. So he got rid of that solution and never got his money refunded. Other than that I can mention 100s of scenario's where he either outright stole money or messed things up such as licensing, paperwork that would cost us money etc etc. However, this post is already getting much too long and I quite frankly don't want to have to relive all of these moments again while writing this. Then for years he kept a carrot in front of me, stating that he would retire and leave me the business. (I could elaborate on this as well, but this would again be extremely lengthy and painful to get into) This was all an elaborate scheme to just keep me going as well and quite frankly he was just looking to keep filling his coffers to leave money to his family. There were many times I was angry beyond belief and wanted to sue Carlos or cut him out, but the team kept me level-headed as they expected he would sign over ownership to me if I just kept my cool. When that didn't happen, I realised that the best thing I could do is give up on my dreams, since Carlos was unable to get me any of the licensing, banking, shell corporations etc etc that were required for my bigger dreams. Instead, I told many of the team members to find jobs elsewhere, when our balances were running low due to a lack of innovation/new crowdfunding projects to invest in. I was hoping that by cutting costs we could make enough to cover balances, costs and slowly stack up funds that would allow us to restart the business by ourselves, without Carlos. This however didn't happen, with Carlos continuously messing things up, even the simple stuff such as renewing AWS and other services that were connected to his creditcards. This caused a lot of downtime and issues and inevitably a loss of trust & income that was required to run profitably. All the while he kept taking money out of the balances without mentioning a thing and the only way for me to find out was by checking the balances occasionally, only to get a bunch of lies over and over. I haven't spoken to him for years. I simply can't control myself when talking to him anymore. I have used middlemen and/or translators for years to talk to him. Yes, it's actually that bad. Why didn't I talk about this years ago? Balances were extremely illiquid.. It would have made a massive dent in the balances of 100s of thousands of users, the staff was working full-time for MTV and would all be out on the streets and Carlos made it very clear that he would just walk away from the business unharmed as soon as we'd stop paying him/blew the thing up. That's another thing by the way.. He got paid the full 9.5 years of my employment, while I, as an employee, haven't been paid for years and my giant loan to the company has never been repaid either. And I'm not alone in this. Andraz, David, Domingo and several others have worked for years without payment or at the very least extremely backlogged payments of as much as 12-18 months. Whether times were good or bad, I always paid the employees before taking a penny for myself, even when I went broke a few times and barely survived. Anyway.. Long story short.. The adventure ends here, because we lost our biggest payment processor. We dealt with the loss of about 7-8 payment processors before this over the years, but times are very different nowadays and this payment processor is the sole payment processor of our most successful casino. Without that processor and casino, there is no MTV. We were barely skating by and I always knew that if Perfect Money would disappear under current circumstances, with a stripped down business, it would be the nail in the coffin. Sorry for sounding judgmental in the post, blaming most of the downfall on Carlos etc.. However, you have to understand that I've had to carry this burden for a VERY long time and dealt with many people that treated me poorly because of things I couldn't talk about. I chose the path that would protect the public and staff as much as possible, at the cost of my own wealth, health, dreams and ego. I joined MTV in 2012 as an investor and now 12 years later it has to come to an end. Thank you for those that have been around all along and supported us. Thank you to the staff. Thank you. Marc
druth8x
Traffic Value: $22,417.44153 United States
30/10/2024
15:17
I lost ~$30K (I never cashed out) hoping that somehow an idea could finally come in and PM Casino could pay for it....and get us out of needing the casino. Heck you Marc still have my Crypto Fund money (well, had, you seem to lose and gain more than I will ever make and are able to continue).$30K was most all of my savings at the time and while I can make that back in a couple years if I go back to work it's still set me back with regards to Stock Market (the safe option that tracks the market) savings for when I really should be retired. Yeah, we all knew if PM casino went it was over. Which is why I stopped doing ads years ago. Pennies for minutes per day everyday twice a day, for something as unstable as casino's. Yeah, I know Carlos really was bad for us, I had hoped he was hands off, just taking a salary not stealing on top of all that. So, in the end, Carlos was just as bad "Jo". I wish the band aid was ripped off sooner. I hope no one invested anything in the site anymore and it was just gambling, which losses are expected. I have other questions/comments, but I will see if others post them first.
babycare
Traffic Value: $25,276.97238 Saudi Arabia
30/10/2024
16:03
Hi Marc, Andaz, hi everybody, hi druth8x, happy to see you one last time. 10 years! Really a loooong time. Scores of PTCs sprang up.... disappeared.....MTV moved along, albeit scarcely... Now that the end has come, a tear rolls out...
stra
Traffic Value: $285.59089 Greece
30/10/2024
16:13
What about our balances?Just a useless number on the pc monitor screen? No provision about it, since you knew it was comming? So the "s" word is written here? What about trust? Is this the way you deal with it? I am really pissed off.
McLeonis
Traffic Value: $201.38636 Viet Nam
30/10/2024
17:11
The first stock I bought was here I still remember that day. MTV has been a part of my investment path. Every journey will come to an end, I hope other investors will not suffer too much damage.Thank you Marc for being honest, hope you resolve the remaining issues well. Good luck!
slosumo - Administrator
Traffic Value: $28,438.4426 Slovenia
30/10/2024
17:45
@druth Unfortunately there was never a good time to “pull the plug”. The way we saw it, was as long as there was a chance to keep at least running and if there was some chance for an “upside event” to happen, it was better for more people, than closing at the first sign of trouble. For us it meant just extra work/worry to keep it running for longer, but it meant there was still some chance, and that along the way more people could cash out. Trying to keep things at least running for the past 3 years, meant that over time an extra $300k+ cashouts were able to be done to users, vs not running at all. We also refrained from giving “false hope of big change”, as that would falsely entice even more people to invest further, causing more damage. This way at least most people didn't invest further, allowing to at least keep the site from collapsing, and keep us paying more cashouts in the meantime as revenue got in from products. There was no perfect solution, each decision had pros and cons.In the past 4 years, there were several points where things started improving (even with the minimal funding & staff availability/willingness to work with no pay & Delays), but each time any significant progress happened, it was hammered back by: server attacks, $50k lost in PBG due to hackers/exploiters, loss of processors and money on them (OkPay, Neteller, AdvCash), offerwall earnings not being withdrawn, delays in payment of server invoices, causing large outages, etc. etc. Add in crypto volatility, increased cashout rates due to “not many things happening”, and now loss of Perfect Money, and we're where we are. And the PTC/Crypto landscape changed a lot of things as well. The running of MTV has simply became too costly, both in time, effort and money, for any major improvements to be made. Any significant change in business or ideas is extremely costly and complicated to make, on top of there always being risk of some black swan event happening again in terms of locked accounts/payment processors, outside of our control. We've done our reasonable best in the past 4 years (before doing vastly unreasonable amounts of work/life invested in the prior years), and took decisions that had the highest potential upside (trying to make the most out of the situation) and least further damage to users. We're sorry it came to this and for anyone who is at a loss - we know it's not an easy news to take, and people will be rightfully pissed, but we've done all we could from our side and we simply don't see any way forward from here.
rajaconsult
Traffic Value: $11,069.20771 Germany
30/10/2024
18:13
Hello Marc,either you are dumber than I ever thought or you are one of the biggest scammers in this industry. I tend to think the latter. You once promised us that all account balances were safe and could be paid out at any time. Now we know you are a liar. Your attempt to shift the blame solely onto Carlos is disgusting. Carlos is certainly also a big scammer in this game. But you now write that you have known all this for years and you did nothing and did not inform anyone? You were the CEO! Shame on you! You chose the path that would protect the public and staff as much as possible? Sorry, but I have to laugh out loud. You continued to let many people invest and did nothing. Shame! You have not yet closed the possibility of making deposits on the sites. Why? Are you still hoping for a few small deposits? Shame! I am glad that I made the decision to get out a few months ago. I got most of my money out. I'm sad because you cheated thousands of people who wanted to earn a little money. With Richard, everyone knew it was a pyramid scheme. But you promised everyone wonderful stories of a legal and great future. And before you go on bashing Carlos: You were the CEO! You were responsible! You didn't pull the ripcord in time! Stop hiding behind lies and admit your inability. I'm done. Goodbye to everyone!
Hoppa61
Traffic Value: $73,032.40453 Netherlands
30/10/2024
19:20
If Carlos was such a problem, then was it never considered to zip up the software and balances and roll it out on another domain.And what would it take to take last night's mirror and roll it out on another domain? Do you think that could still be viable, or is the lack of payment-processors making it a big nogo? I mean, all email-adresses and other information can be very valuable.
Laurang90
Traffic Value: $2,283.49818 Spain
30/10/2024
19:27
So what is the point of the wagering competition? Because it started 5 days ago and I guess you already knew that you would close the sites.And what about playbitcoingames? Are you closing it too??
Rajasatheesh
Traffic Value: $95.48117 India
30/10/2024
19:53
@MarcdeKoning, @slosumo I have been using Paidverds and MTV since before you became CEO. How can I recover my losses?. PLEASE HELP ME
orlan12fish - Administrator
Traffic Value: $5,500.61933 Guatemala
30/10/2024
20:08
Perfect Money started restricting accounts just recently (and by recently I mean that this is something that we've been trying to sort out the past few days). We switched accounts many times to continue but after a few days, they would restrict operations from that particular country again.
orlan12fish - Administrator
Traffic Value: $5,500.61933 Guatemala
30/10/2024
20:53
Marc and Slosumo,I appreciate everything you did for the business. I'm forever thankful for giving me the chance to prove myself and let me be part of MTV and all of its projects. It's been 8 years since I've been involved with the team and I'm very sad to see this part of my life coming to an end. I learned so much and diversified my abilities/skills drastically. And if it wasn't because of you trusting me and delegating those tasks, I wouldn't stand where I am now. - Everyone else, I'm truly sorry that this is the news that had to be shared with you. I put a lot of effort and passion into MTV, I wanted it to succeed. You have no idea but after every sign of recovery in the past few years, there was always something dragging us down. This happened multiple times. We may be able to tell you the hundreds of reasons that made the team arrive at this decision, and we know that some will understand and some won't. The reality is that either way, the outcome is not going to change. The team warned us this was a possibility, but that didn't mean we would stop trying. We did until the last reasonable opportunity there was.
stra
Traffic Value: $285.59089 Greece
31/10/2024
00:13
It is the end of years i tried hard and never withdrew.That is what it is. I was about to cash out in PTCShare, that's why i asked about the payment processors fees. Well, you were faster, i couldn't catch up with you. |
