A publicity stunt for the upcoming Initial Coin Offering[1] (ICO) of Ukrainian social network ASKfm led to the death of one person last week, the Financial Times’ Alphaville[2] reports Friday, May 25.
According to FT, ASKfm sponsored “crypto enthusiasts” Taras Pozdnii, Roman Gorodechnii, and Dmitrii Semenko to climb Mount Everest and place a Ledger[3] wallet holding 500,000 in ASKfm tokens at the peak, with a second wallet with an equal amount of tokens to be offered in a contest.
A Youtube promotional video[4] for the stunt asked its viewers to “get ready for the highest token. Literally,” offering the wallet at the top of Everest to anyone “brave enough” to get it. According to a spokesperson for ASKfm, the tokens at the top of Everest are worth $50,000, a sum calculated by an “estimate of their value once the pre-sale and ICO launch.”
The FT confirmed with Everest blogger Alan Arnette’s report of the weekend[5] that a Ukrainian team had summited Everest, but the blog noted that one of the accompanying sherpas, Lam Babu Sherpa, had died during the descent.
Lam Babu Sherpa’s death is reported on Russian media site 4Sport.ua[6] as occurring due to either snow blindness or physical exhaustion, the snow blindness confirmed by a representative of Nepal’s Ministry of Tourism, according to FT. Another 4Sport.ua post[7] by the Ukrainian team described the death in the following manner:
“In a second - animal fear, and I shout to Dima - let’s get out of here, or these will be the last pictures we’ll ever take. At this time there were three of our sherpa at the top, we saw Dima’s sherpa and as it turned
