Even the most beneficial of cryptocurrencies can lend themselves to shady schemes. Doc.com, the Mexico City-based health startup behind the MTC token, may be misleading investors to drum up higher fundraising.
Coindesk reported on the company, which has developed an app, already available in many countries, that provides healthcare and psychology assistance to underprivileged areas. Their business model is to pay customers in MTC for their health records, and then coordinate health services for them with doctors in their community. Their website advertises over 200,000 impacted lives.
The problems start when you look at how they fundraise. Mozilla CEO John Lilly and LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman are listed on their page of advisors; however, both deny any formal relationship with the company. Misleading investors with this type of information can get very dicey.
So far, Doc.com has sold over $50 million in tokens, through its initial coin offering (ICO) and through conferences held since.
The company also has a Lifechain blockchain project in the pipeline, which would eventually allow the transmission and safeguarding of healthcare data. For the moment though, they are operating without it, and that is raising questions as well.
Alex Gladstein, chief strategy officer for the Human Rights Foundation, was quoted as saying, “There are serious concerns about companies buying medical data from vulnerable populations. If the security model isn’t super strong, there’s potential for abuse.”
Gladstein also worried that the company seems more focused on raising money than they are on their users. With health data at play, it’s not inconceivable that the data Doc.com collects could be used or sold for profit that does not benefit the patients.
Many may be installing Doc.com to earn some easy MTC tokens for resale on an exchange, a practice that Doc.com even seems to recommend on their website. Gladstein is “very concerned” that users ignorant to the company’s business practices might be giving away a gold mine of data for a pittance of cryptocurrency.
Doc.com might be guilty of nothing more than some misleading information on their site, and one would hope that they have nothing but good intentions for their services. For the moment though, they seem to be a bit more focused on the money than they are on the healthcare.
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