Insider.pro continues a study into the most curious ICO of recent years. This time we’re taking a close look at a project from a largely illegal industry, and a dazzling protagonist and her rich Russian husband taking in by storm.
Paragon is a cannabis oriented company. Cannabis industry is very complicated as the U.S. still considers it illegal for most part. That means businesses would struggle to open bank accounts, pay for services and employees, or simply transfer money as the Federal Reserve System would block any monetary interactions.
Paragon project is implemented on the ethereum basis and will use smart contracts to make the process of cannabis consumption more transparent. Developers focus on the fact that marijuana can successfully be used for medical purposes to treat stress and depression. However, the developers didn’t explain that for product application it’s necessary to create certain conditions for the legalization of whole industry.
Anyway, during its ICO in September-October, 2017, the project managed to collect about $70 million by selling its PRG tokens (basic price per token was $1, total amount of issued tokens - 200,000,000). According to Paragon, all the collected money will be spent on buying property to convert them into the so called “green zones”. Paragon token is a utility token that will provide transactions in a restricted industry.
Ever since the project began there were a lot of questions aimed at project’s developers.
For example on Reddit network, one user asked about the technical team behind the project but hasn’t received any response.
In February, 2018 a lawsuit was filed in the U.S. with charges of violating the Securities law during an ICO. According to the statement of claim during the period between August 15 and October 16, 2017 the defendants collected at least $70 million in cryptocurrencies directly violating the law.
The complainant, Astley Davy, said that during the ICO, the project offered unregistered securities and used such words as an ‘investor’ and ‘assets’, as the project was presented to the investors as a security.
But SEC warned that “investors should understand that at the moment no initial coin offering has been registered by SEC". Anyway, SEC is keeping a watchful eye on the Paragon project, but has not accused it of wrongdoing or triggered any action as of yet. It’s safe to say that the purchase and arrangement of properties is planned for the second half of 2018, and for now we can enjoy only a mobile app and news of partnership with Civic Technologies.
Only in early September the company opened the first coworking space in Hollywood, which was bought for $3,8 million. What will happen to the rest of a quite considerable sum - only time will tell.
Looks good but sounds lame?
Of course, any project can’t work without the founders and believe us, the CEO of Paragon will not disappoint you:
A stunning girl, Jessica VerSteeg, Miss Iowa, model and actress, didn’t seem to plan to dive into the world of cannabis, but a personal drama pushed her to open a multimillion business. In 2013, she met with an NFL player who died of a painkillers overdose. The tragedy prompted Jessica to seek a solution that would help the idea to be received transparently and fairly and with the help of her husband, who worked in the cryptocurrency industry, came up with this solution: to use a blockchain technology.
In 2014, VerSteeg founded her first startup, AuBox, a subscription service, which delivered cannabis products to the doors of the customer. The blockchain technology, which she called an AuChain, then moved on to the idea of Paragon, offering cryptocurrency and blockchain designed specifically for the world of cannabis.
What happened later shouldn’t be a surprise...
Despite acting as a CEO, Jessica continues to work as a model, give out interviews and appear for various publications such as Forbes. And the girl also doesn’t miss a chance to post on own site - www.jessversteeg.com, where anyone can see all her works, be warned, some of them are rather revealing.
Her husband, Egor Lavrov, is also a rather interesting person. he acts as the Chief Creative Officer of Paragon according to the official Paragon website. There is an opinion that Lavrov is the real leader of Paragon and Jessica only presents the project to the community.
Nevertheless, Egor has an even more interesting biography than his wife. Lavrov is a Russian businessman who has earned money in Russia and moved to the U.S. in search of a better life.
According to Wikipedia, Lavrov was born in Moscow, studied in London and Prague and was very interested in the internet. The first place of work was the internet magazine “Planet Internet” but Lavrov quickly lost interest and soon sold it. And it's all at 16 years of age!
Next Egor began developing such resource as fuck.ru. But he wasn’t just interested only in business: he also participated in the electoral campaign of Vladimir Putin. Recently Lavrov owned a group of companies - “Grupo Lavrov”, which deals with various businesses in the Dominican Republic, the U.S, Ecuador, Venezuela, Spain and other places.
There is another opinion - the Russian resource kompromat.ru says that Lavrov is the son of a criminal mastermind that terrorised one of Moscow suburbs. Also it was his dad that bought "Planet Internet" magazine for him.
Later Egor and his school friend, Konstantin Rykov founded the mentioned fuck.ru. Soon friends realized that the internet is a good way to make big money and engaged in IT hacking, the porn industry and offering certain ‘internet projects’ to businessmen.
Lavrov was a progressive and talented person and soon caught the eye of political figures, whom he managed to deceive. Then for his own safety, Egor swiftly moved to the U.S, where he soon met his beautiful wife.
So let’s wait and see how this beautiful couple, continues to develop their project.