A publicity stunt encouraging "crypto enthusiasts" to climb Mount Everest: indirectly led to a man’s death
Ukrainian social network ASKfm is now planning to raise money through an initial coin offering, or ICO. Four people were sponsored by ASKfm to climb Mount Everest and bury the hard drive holding $50,000 worth of cryptocurrency, which at this point have no proven value. In a promo for the stunt posted earlier in May, the company encouraged crypto enthusiasts to go and search for these buried digital tokens, “if [they are] brave enough”.
The publicity stunt indirectly led to a man’s death, who was one of four sponsored men mentioned above, according to the report from FuninUSA.
According to a blog of Alan Arnette, a Colorado climber who covers Everest events each season, in the process, one of the local Nepalese Sherpas accompanying the group died, which Arnette mentioned as "Preventable Deaths."
One of the four climbers who had recently returned to Ukraine from Nepal, Taras Pozdnii, told the news outlet they "lost track of the Sherpa after he accompanied them to the summit, and that he didn't know how the man died,” reported in FuninUSA.
The value of that cryptocurrency, which the company said is now buried in the snow on Everest, is based on an "estimate of their value once the pre-sale and ICO launch," a spokesperson told.
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