Marcelo Garcia Casil, the man who was pivotal in authoring OneCoin’s disputed blockchain paper has finally spoken out that he regretted his involvement in the process.
In an extensive Reddit chat, Marcelo Garcia Casil who worked with DXMarkets to author the supposed white paper claimed he was contacted to write the white paper for an ‘IT company’, only to find out that it was for OneCoin. He, however, said he will not be able to divulge details of the document as well as whether OneCoin had a blockchain in the first place because he claimed he was forbidden by a non-disclosure agreement, NDA he signed to do so.
Marcelo Garcia Casil said he was forced to speak out after he received a barrage of criticisms from the general public for getting involved with OneCoin. He affirmed that he had wanted to hold his peace but he wanted to set the record and narrate his side of the story.
For many months unending, OneCoin has faced public rejection from the blockchain community that it is not a genuine digital currency as peddled by its founder, Dr. Ruja Ignatova, a Bulgarian who has been charged with criminal offences in India for selling unregistered investment securities and money laundering.
See below, the confession of Marcelo Garcia Casil:
I was approached to do a blockchain tech audit for a company, later discovered that it was for onecoin, influenced by a trusted friend I decided that my audit could benefit the onecoin users and accepted the work and then produced a paper with recommendations. I was acting with the right intentions but I now regret my involvement. Please read the full details below.
One benefit we all love about blockchain is how keeps a trusted record. That’s not always the case, unfortunately, for some of the material you can find on the world wide web. So, as we at Maecenas, happily see our profile growing, we want to make sure you have the right story about us. I wrote earlier a general piece about how we have progressed so far as a company. (https://medium.com/maecenas/meet-maecenas-the-decentralised-art-gallery-c37da6343255)
Today, I want to clarify one aspect in my own narrative in case it reappears, distorted online, even as Maecenas goes from strength to strength. My goal is to always be transparent. That’s the best way to honor all our supporters.
I have been familiar with blockchain technologies for years and am used to reviewing systems. In one case, I was referred by another startup to run a tech audit on a blockchain system that another company had. New management had joined that other company and they wanted to have an independent perspective on their internal systems. I tentatively accepted, and only later on learned that this other company was OneCoin. I went ahead with the assignment in the belief that auditing a system and providing input on blockchain technology would ultimately help the wider community. I believed it would help the people who might end up using it and do what Blockchain can do best – bring transparency.
I had the right intentions. People who have known me for years, know I aim to be a consistently positive contributor to the blockchain ecosystem and would never intentionally do it any harm. But I realised later I was naive in this case because I had misjudged how my involvement would be misconstrued. I acted as an external and fully-independent party and, as is often the case with auditing, I had to sign an NDA. I still have to comply with that obligation even though it means I can’t provide details that would correct misinterpretations.
I delivered, as agreed, a report detailing my objective findings and made recommendations for improvements. I was then asked to produce a new report explaining the theory on how blockchain technology is to be implemented in a centralised environment like the company’s and how to correctly leverage the benefits of the technology. I believed I was doing something positive that would benefit everyone in the ecosystem. However, some people reacted very negatively to the news and started attacking me. I made the mistake of responding to the trolls and very quickly my words were twisted and false stories were created and published. I then decided to stop commenting on the subject completely. About two weeks later, things settled down and I heard no more about it, except for the odd message from someone who bumped into the material online.
But I am aware our increasingly broad group of supporters may now also stumble across this. So, I wanted to tell the real story. This way, the focus remains on Maecenas’s busy present and bright future. I cannot be more excited about what we are doing — building a decentralised art gallery to democratise fine art investment.
