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Today I've received several messages of people distributing invites for InitiativeQ.

The first red flag is that the only way to participate is by being invited, which smells like a pyramid scheme. If it was something legitimate, why only allow entering with an invite? Just for marketing purposes?

The second red flag is that it's a thing full of beautiful promises but has nothing concrete at all.

On the other hand:

  • I don't see the "scammers" getting anything at all out of this: looks like you only have to give your name and email.

  • There's not an "entry fee" like the usual pyramid schemes.

  • Apparently reputable people are involved (creators of PayPal)? Does this mean anything?

So what's the point? Is there any logic in this? How does this work?

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  • Your question might be answered by the FAQ. It may not work, but I don't think it's a scam.
    – chepner
    Commented Nov 7, 2018 at 23:18
  • Create a new E-mail address and join with a bogus name. Then see what the game is.
    – Bob Baerker
    Commented Nov 7, 2018 at 23:21
  • @Dheer I thought I'd seen this before, too, but I couldn't find it searching for InitiativeQ. Maybe the older one needs a new title, or better tagging?
    – Rupert Morrish
    Commented Nov 8, 2018 at 3:11
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    @RupertMorrish Agreed. Let me take a stab at editing
    – Dheer
    Commented Nov 8, 2018 at 5:29
  • According to davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/2018/10/25/… "Q’s founder sold his fraud-detection startup to PayPal, but that’s it." (The site has had some other more in-depth pieces on InitiativeQ's pipe dreams too).
    – timday
    Commented Nov 8, 2018 at 20:24

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This is yet another cryptocurrency attempting to gain some marketing clout by attracting a large number of initial users (they hope). According to the link you provided, they want to setup an international electronic payment system using wifi terminals, driven by demand for their "large international user base", and then profit from whatever equipment or transaction fees they can leverage upon deployment. While it's not necessarily a scam, it is a pipe dream get-rich-quick scheme dependent on millions of hypothetical future users paying those transaction fees.

I would say the dangers that could arise from this vary between the level of responding to a spam email message, up to the level of opening an online bank account from a shady 3rd world nation. The benefits they promise hint at, meanwhile, are very unlikely to appear in my estimation.

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    Technically it is not crypto currency. It's more of digital currency.
    – Dheer
    Commented Nov 8, 2018 at 2:17

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