We’ve seen it time, time and time again – projects that promise the world, raise a ton of money and then vanish into the ether. A new crypto project has popped up in the crypto world, touting itself as the marketplace to rival Amazon. But as soon as you dig beneath the surface, alarm bells begin ringing. AllForCrypto is the marketplace in question, and the more research you do, the more it smells of scam. Will AllForCrypto be the Amazon killer, or just another crypto scam that steals money from the world and vanishes?
A Promising Idea, but Poorly Executed
In the AllForCrypto whitepaper, the project points out some huge issues with the e-commerce world – Amazon and eBay take too much money. These two major platforms can take upwards of 45% of the item’s value, leaving sellers with no choice but to ramp up their prices. In a bid to put sellers back in control, AllForCrypto is trying to build a marketplace that has ultra-low-fees and removes the possibility of chargebacks. This is a fantastic idea, and we’ve seen a number of other marketplaces launch with similar objectives.
However, that’s where the fun and excitement ends. The AllForCrypto website is built on WordPress using a WooCommerce plugin to facilitate the online store. This is not blockchain technology in any shape or form, and virtually anyone with a sliver of WordPress experience could set up the same store. It’s still not clear what the project’s token can be used for other than making payments on the website, but if this is its only purpose then it’s a pretty useless token – especially as AllForCrypto accepts other tokens and fiat.
Questionable Wording and Marketing
In promotional videos, in content on social media and even in the CEO’s bio, AllForCryptos touts itself as the only marketplace that allows people to buy and sell items for cryptocurrency. Additionally, there is a marketing video that says AllForCryptos was the first to achieve this milestone too. These claims are all wrong. There are hundreds of marketplaces out there that allow people to buy and sell goods for cryptocurrency. Most famously, Silk Road was one of the first marketplaces to achieve these goals, and there are hundreds of dark web stores currently doing this too.
Let’s Get into That Video
AllForCryptos is spending a huge 50% of its funds on marketing, and this is probably the reason its ICO and IEO reviews are either a perfect 5/5 or 4.5/5. For a project dedicating so much money to its marketing strategy, this video is very poorly made. If you’re going to be the Amazon killer, you need to come up with a nicer video.
This marketing video feels very much like the videos you see on scam projects. In fact, GlowCryptos had a very similar video with the camera fixed on one person spouting off a bunch of buzzwords to attract interest. So, if this video is anything to go by, it’s probably best to avoid this site like the plague.
Demo Content Still Active
Before we get into the technical specs of the site, any project that claims to have an expert marketing team should know to remove the demo categories from their theme before beginning marketing. It’s a rookie mistake that has been made a number of times on the AllForCrypto website. Aside from the demo content, the website is poorly designed and isn’t user-friendly – try using the dropdown menu after a long day!
The checkout styling is the basic and default styling that comes with WooCommerce, meaning that the team took no time to make it look reasonable. AllForCryptos accepts cryptocurrencies through the coinpayments.net payment gateway, yet another WordPress plugin that is very run of the mill.
Built on WordPress and Sharing Hosting
Promising to be a blockchain project in its whitepaper, AllForCrypto has strayed a long way from its intended path. According to data from builtwith.com, AllForCrypto is currently using WordPress as its content management system and backend, with WooCommerce powering its store module. The theme has been built with the popular drag and drop editor – Divi – meaning it’s likely the site doesn’t actually have a developer on the books.
Next up, AllForCrypto is poorly optimized and is missing a number of basic features that even a junior developer would add in. According to data from GTMetrix, AllForCrypto is lacking gzip compression – virtually standard on every website these days – it’s not leveraging browser caching and it isn’t using a content distribution network. All of these are free and take seconds to implement, further pointing to the fact that the AllForCrypto team has no clue what it’s doing other than scamming people.
Finally, the AllForCrypto marketplace is hosted on a server with the IP address 54.37.157.176. Now, there are 7 other websites hosted on the same server, meaning it’s a shared hosting plan. If AllForCrypto wants to become scalable, it needs to get itself a dedicated hosting plan or host the marketplace itself. A shared hosting plan like this will likely cap bandwidth, meaning if it gets a lot of traffic it will go over its monthly limit. After the monthly limit is passed then the website will be throttled and connections will become incredibly slow. This is another major red flag and points further towards AllForCrypto being a scam. Even a cat would know that this is a bad idea, so the fact that AllForCrypto allegedly has a CTO is slightly alarming.
Standing No Chance Against the Competition
Even if AllForCrypto magically turns out to be legitimate – something we highly doubt will ever happen – it faces stiff competition from legitimate competitors. OpenBazaar has been active for a number of months now, and it’s a much nicer application and actually uses blockchain technology. It’s truly peer-to-peer with no middlemen – like AllForCrypto – meaning it truly has 0 fees and is decentralized. Additionally, earlier this week we saw the launch of the Particl Marketplace. Particl has the best chance out of all decentralized marketplaces to become the Amazon killer and it’s one of the best-looking marketplaces to boot. The competition is stiff, and sadly AllForCrypto is nowhere near as good as any of the competitors.
The Conclusion
Sure, AllForCrypto has a highly rated ICO and IEO, but you can buy these high ratings so they’re nothing to go by. The hard facts point towards AllForCrypto being a scam, and unless something huge changes soon, then we won’t be shocked when it vanishes into the ether with people’s money. If you want our advice, steer well clear of this charlatan platform and check out other blockchain based marketplaces like OpenBazaar and Particl – you will have a much better experience and won’t get scammed.
