What Happened to Titanium Blockchain Infrastructure Services? (It’s a Scam.)

In its white paper, TBIS claimed that to be a viable competitor to Amazon’s AWS Cloud and Microsoft’s Azure platforms. Hosted on the Ethereum blockchain, Titanium promised that it would offer 99.99 percent uptime for its networking-related services and applications — something that only large-scale infrastructure companies can guarantee. Technical details in the white paper were extremely sparse, however, and few questioned how the platform would achieve these lofty goals. The company went on to raise millions of dollars globally on the back of such assurances by the company and its founder, Michael Alan Stollery (also known as MichaelStollaire). https://twitter.com/MichaelStollair/status/916468290238607362 Before he founded TBIS, Michael Stollery was one of the most well-recognized advocates of another blockchain platform, Verge. His popularity on Twitter as an investor and Verge evangelist eventually made him a public personality in the blockchain community. When he launched TBIS in late 2017, his focus shifted to building up hype for the upcoming token sale. Stollery claimed that he founded EHI, a network infrastructure consultancy firm, which gave him unique insight into the industry. He also said that the company’s clientele included major fintech businesses that would be willing to work with what TBIS had to offer. Titanium’s claimed partnership with companies such as Accenture, Apple, IBM, HP, and Walt Disney were eventually found to be bogus. However, in Jan 2018, the company successfully hit its hard cap an entire month ahead of schedule. 35 million tokens were sold, according to a Twitter post published Jan 19. The hype for TBIS was unrivaled, with numerous crypto personalities on YouTube, such as Suppoman, leading the pack. https://twitter.com/MichaelStollair/status/954081556598935552

Trouble with the Government

A press release issued by the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in May 2018 revealed that the regulator had appealed the court to impose an emergency asset freeze on Titanium Blockchain Infrastructure Services. In its release, the SEC said that Titanium Blockchain was guilty of fabricating false testimonials, lying about having business relationships with several companies and holding a fraudulent and deceptive token sale. As of the time of publication, Titanium Blockchain Infrastructure Services continues to be under investigation by the SEC. All assets belonging to the firm and its founder, Michael Stollery, also remain frozen and in control of a temporary receiver appointed by the court. To date, the recovered assets include $250,000 in two bank accounts, 152 bitcoins, 2156 ether, and smaller amounts of a few other digital currencies. It remains to be seen how victims of the TBIS scam will be compensated from these recovered funds. What do you think about Titanium Blockchain Infrastructure Services and Michael Stollery? Let us know in the comments below!