I am Francis Pouliot, the Director of Public Affairs at the Bitcoin Embassy, and in that respect I am the ultimate responsible for partnerships and agreements.

I confirm: there is no, have never been, and will never be any partnership or agreement between the Bitcoin Embassy and Potcoin leaders (nor any other "altcoin" representatives).

Thus, it should be clear that news article circulating that there is an agreement with the Bitcoin Embassy is entirely false. This is the definition of fake news

They have agreed to remove that mention from their press release, a clear admission of guilt.

Because I am horrified by the idea that the Bitcoin Embassy would be associated to Potcoin because of their press releases and media pumping, I'll share some thoughts.

How could they possibly think they could get away with this? Here is some context:

1. The Bitcoin Embassy is a non-profit organization founded in 2013. It is hosted on the third floor of a building which hosts numerous Bitcoin projects.
2. On the first floor of the building which hosts the Bitcoin Embassy, there is a physical Bitcoin Exchange called Satoshi Counter. Some traders there (myself included) often suggest our clients to use shapeshift to transform altcoins to bitcoins, after which we can buy the bitcoins off of them. In that case, the clients are transaction with Shapeshift, and not with us directly. One of the foudners of the Bitcoin Embassy is also a founder of Satoshi Counter.
3. Potcoin representatives were told by a trader at Satoshi Counter how they could use shapeshift to exchange their Potcoins, like any other altcoin, for Bitcoin, after which they could buy/sell bitcoins at Satoshi Counter, like any client does.
4. The Bitcoin Embassy was never consulted in anyway by Potcoin. I was notified of this news by a Google alert. There is no agreement, either verbal or in writing. There is certainly no partnership, nor contract of any kind. Myself and transisto are the only two people involved in both organizations, but there are many more different people involved with Satoshi Counter and many other involved with the Bitcoin Embassy, and both organizations are effectively completely separate.
5. There is no agreement, partnership of any kind between Potcoin and Satoshi Counter either. It's not a question of semantics here. As people, none of use would EVER engage in any partnership with the leaders of Potcoin.

Let's be 100% clear: this was an extremely unethical and deceptive use the Bitcoin Embassy logo, name and reputation without our consent.

It could have passed off as an honest mistake, but not only did they not comply to my requests to have them take down reddit post and tweets, they actually started negotiating and asking me to remove tweets and reddit posts criticizing them.

If it wasn't clear enough, and with all respect to this community, I personally am offended by the very idea that the Bitcoin Embassy could be associated to Potcoin. A more cynical person than myself would call Potcoin an obvious ponzi scheme which has no other purpose than speculation, and which is specifically crafted to create a sense of community to attract what traders will call "bagholders" which allow earlier investors to cash out.

Why would anybody merchant accept Potcoin instead of Bitcoin? What is the value proposition? It's like litecoin, but it's has a more limited market potential? And it's not even like litecoin, because the development team is inactive.

Potcoin is basically a gift card that only lets buy at VERY LIMITED number of stores. Who in his right mind would trade a liquid currency for that, unless you do it right away before a purchase because there is a discount?

It's a vastly inferior clone that is dramatically less secure, liquid or useful. I can probably do a Potcoin clone equivalent in a few minutes. Even the copyright information of Potcoin shows that it is a clone of Bitocin and Litecoin, just worse.

The Bitcoin Embassy has almost never endorsed any product or service. We would NEVER endorse any cryptocurrency other than Bitcoin. Nobody in their right mind would endorse Potcoin, unless it was out of ignorance or naivety at best, and greed and in the pursuit of personal profit at worse.


Anybody caught promoting Potcoin on the Bitcoin Embassy premises will be immediately expelled with a permanent ban.

I have to admint I am biased, since I was very angry when we caught one of the Core members of the Potcoin team puting a sticker on one of our windows, which was a pain in the ass to take off. You know who you are, you had a baseball cap and were walking your dog and got caught by our cameras.

I continue to encourage cyrptocurrency innovation, but using deceptive marketing to enrich earlier investors is not innovation.

Hi all,

I'm not typically one to 'shill' a project, but in light of some of the recent developments over here I wanted to provide a brief introduction to the Tokes Platform. We're also a digital currency project dedicated to the legal cannabis industry, but we are diversified into several other products and services. Namely, we are in the process of completing MSB (money services business) registration to serve as a fiat gateway/cash onramp for industry partners, tangible products (primarily oriented towards CBD initially), our digital token, and advocacy segments for both cannabis and crypto. We're finalizing our first agreements with dispensaries local to us and should have some real world transactability in the coming weeks.


Feel free to pop in to one of our communications channels with any questions:

• BitcoinTalk: https://bt.irlbtc.com/view/1690035.msg16959756#msg16959756
• Slack: https://tokes-slack.herokuapp.com/
• Website: http://cannabisrevolution.us
• Tokes Faucet: http://WeTakeTokes.com

Cheers,
kov

Hi all,

I'm not typically one to 'shill' a project, but in light of some of the recent developments over here I wanted to provide a brief introduction to the Tokes Platform. We're also a digital currency project dedicated to the legal cannabis industry, but we are diversified into several other products and services. Namely, we are in the process of completing MSB (money services business) registration to serve as a fiat gateway/cash onramp for industry partners, tangible products (primarily oriented towards CBD initially), our digital token, and advocacy segments for both cannabis and crypto. We're finalizing our first agreements with dispensaries local to us and should have some real world transactability in the coming weeks.


Feel free to pop in to one of our communications channels with any questions:

• BitcoinTalk: https://bt.irlbtc.com/view/1690035.msg16959756#msg16959756
• Slack: https://tokes-slack.herokuapp.com/
• Website: http://cannabisrevolution.us
• Tokes Faucet: http://WeTakeTokes.com
• Bittrex: https://bittrex.com/Market/Index?MarketName=BTC-TKS

Cheers,
kov

Hi, I’ve been asked to clarify where that last news could have originated.

About two weeks ago someone came in our business, Satoshi Counter, to talk about potcoin. I was interested in learning more, We looked at the potwallet/dispensary interface together and we created an account to test it out, he had written Bitcoin Embassy as the merchant name which I then changed to btcmbc, (possible source of confusion). I was asked if he could leave a sign in the store saying that we accept potcoin, I was clearly opposed to it for numerous reasons.  

Satoshi Counter has been making Shapeshift available to it's customer for many months. A few weeks prior to this visit we helped two peoples who had been gifted Potcoin at an event to shift their potcoin into fiat.

I'm usually not a big fan of using the term "fake news" but there was a whole lot of wrong and false assumption in this “news”.  As for defining the above as a partnership, I believe, is quite a stretch of the imagination. I also believe both parties in a "partnership" should be made aware of public announcement before-hand to avoid unfortunate confusion.

We go to great lengths to educate customers about the risk posed by the irreversibly of bitcoin transaction and warn them of any investment scheme funded through Bitcoins.
Despite what happened I am grateful to the people who took their time to talk to me about the potcoin. At this time I personally have not studied potcoin enough to have an opinions about it as a store of value.

Please correct delete the any remaining mention of bitcoin embassy + potcoin where possible.

Thank You.

Ps: This is my personal option and not the Bitcoin Embassy's.

Let's call it what it really is...

This is not the first time that Potcoin has made fake announcements and lied to its community.

Who remembers the mysterious bigwig from silicon valley who was supposed to join the team about 6 months ago? Or the army of photoshopped Potcoin ATM machines that was supposed to roll out?

Both of these "fake news" aka "lies" took Potcoin from a dormant state to where it was just prior to 4/20.

Now, we once again see the same behavior repeated.

How many more lies and displays of lack of integrity will the Potcoin community tolerate? The dev does not even interact with the community...

Potcoin has never released fake news and never intends to. The "mysterious bigwig" you are referring to is well on board its been months. As for the army of photoshopped ATM's, Potcoin had actual Potcoin ATM's at River Rock Dispensaries back in the day, no photoshop there. You are also referring to the old dev team (back in 2014) as we have never worked on any ATM's.

Potcoin's tech and dev team is growing strong and more great news to be released shortly.

fake news comment coming from an operator of a competitive coin... not saying you're lying...just saying I am a little skeptical. I will need to do some research though because I have not been as actively involved in the Pot Coin community recently.

I'm hella interested Potcoin and what it's all about, and Where can I get some?