Dear member of Lake Atitlan community,

A resident member of San Marcos, Dakota Kaiser, has been selling financial instruments into our community and abroad which we suspect are unwise, unethical, and maybe even fraudulent. This includes a crypto mutual fund called the DAO Fund which collapsed in November 2022, leaving many people around the lake very upset, and private offers he has been making at APY’s of 30% or more. 

We have gathered a group of concerned citizens, some of whom are victims of Dakota’s offers, many of them for amounts exceeding $20k, to investigate these allegations. It also appears that Dakota is currently launching a new venture, directly on the tail of the DAO Fund failure. We are extremely concerned about this and fear that Dakota may be raising even more money in unwise or unethical means,  even as we write. 

We are asking anyone who has had business dealing with Dakota to contact us by filling-in our Google form database at 

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSewRPtShDTofVaHfbqJI6dm9H_CO5r9HDPhhDa797X6aam8iw/viewform?usp=sf_link 

and to share there, their business dealings with Dakota so that we can get more data, including  the amount of money involved. If our concerns turn out to be true, we desire to create a victim compensation fund, so this information is important. 

Also, we are a small committee and it will require significant amounts of work to either prove or disprove these allegations conclusively. If you wish to help out with the investigation, there are many roles that you can fill including crypto analyst, writer or investigative journalist, lawyer, social media and PR, etc. Please contact us at [email protected] if you wish to help out or have any questions. 

History of Dakota and Starseeds, and nature of the evidence 

The Dao Fund and its failure

• The DAO Fund was created in July 2021 as “a managed pool of cryptocurrencies”, see www.defidao.fund. It attracted a minimum of $300k from lake investors and beyond until its failure in November 2023. The price at launch was $1.00 per token, rose to a peak of $3.50 in the spring of 2022, and then down to $2.17, the current book value claimed by Dakota.
• In November of 2022, Dakota suspended OTC (Over The Counter) redemptions of DAO Fund, meaning that investors could only redeem on Quickswap at approximately 15% of stated book value. One major investor did this, which crashed the value of STAR (the underlying tradable asset of the Starseeds Exchange and the basis of Dakota’s other offers) and rendered the exchange inoperable. The price of DAO on quickswap is currently $0.38, but there is very limited liquidity, rendering DAO Fund tokens essentially worthless. 
• Dakota has asserted that he doesn’t have enough money currently to re-establish liquidity of the Starseeds Exchange. A more probable explanation is that he can’t re-establish liquidity of the exchange because it would just be “throwing good money after bad” as more investors cash out DAO Fund at 5-15% of book value. 
• Dakota has offered different narratives around the failure of the DAO Fund and his decision to end OTC redemptions, none of which are entirely believable. His current valuation of the DAO Fund of $2.17 is not believable, his frequent assertion that DAO Fund is a true DAO (Distributed Autonomous Organization) is not believable. But regardless, his decision to end OTC redemptions constitutes a violation of a prior agreement with investors. If the DAO Fund were a legitimate crypto mutual fund, he ought to be able to redeem investments at some fraction of the original price (which he is not offering, it is currently not possible to get any money at all out of DAO Fund). If the DAO Fund has actually been decimated by the crypto crash or whatever, Dakota ought to admit this fact, offer OTC redemptions at some value, and not claim a valuation of $2.17.

Private Investment Offers and their failure

• Over the course of the last year or more, Dakota has offered private investment offers at guaranteed APY’s of 30% or more, advertising total rates of return of 300% to 500%. The term (payback period) of these loans is not clear on the prospectus, however many people have bought into these offers out of ignorance and personal trust. Specifically, Dakota raised in January 2023 a funding round of $18k (maybe more) for the launch of a new Starseed investment offer, called Star Stations and the StarDAO Ambassador Network (see below).
• Since the crash of the STAR eco-system, the real rate of return of these offers (private investment offers and Star Stations)  appears to be in the 1-3% range, if that (hard to say because payments, which are supposed to be weekly, are irregular if at all). There has been no public communication about this and it appears that the current private offer investors are unaware of this.
• There were two hour-long meetings between Dakota and an earlier group of concerned persons called “The Clearness Committee”. Dakota’s responses to this committee regarding the current yield of private offers and Star Stations, and the reasons for this,  were deemed to be unsatisfactory by the committee.

Suspicious elements in the Star Stations Offer and StarDAO Ambassador network

• In the beginning of this year (2023) Dakota formed a private group of “Starseeds Advisors” to support and advise a new product launch of the Starseeds Exchange called Star Stations, and the StarDAO Ambassador network who would represent the offer to the public. We are calling this initiative Starseeds v2 (Starseeds v1 was essentially DAO Fund). The group grew to 12-14 people and included Marco Beneteau, Simon Que, and a number of prominent business people, lawyers, investors, crypto developers, etc. Dakota raised a minimum of $18k in an initial funding round, promising the usual 300-500%, but not specifying the term. We are in the process of contacting these advisors to see if Dakota is paying up. But regardless, we know that previous private offer investors are currently being defaulted on.
• The primary offer of Starseeds v2 is the Star Stations. The narrative around the revenue model of Star Stations appears to change periodically, and many of the Starseeds Advisors don’t fully understand the revenue model, even the ones who have purchased private offers. The latest narrative DOES make sense (that Star Stations are governance tokens into a fund that is invested by a new trading bot which is fed by human technical analysis signals); however, the trading bot is still in beta, the historical return is uncertain, and therefore promising fixed rates of return of 30% APY or more on Star Stations and private offers appears unwise at best, and fraudulent at worst. 
• On January 31, Dakota called Marco and asked him to participate in an early (or experimental) launch of the StarDAO Ambassador network. This call happened the day after Marco had realized that something was seriously wrong with Dakota and Starseeds, but Dakota did not know this about Marco. In this call, Marco challenged Dakota about the actual rate of return of Star Stations (Marco’s Star Station was yielding 2%) and of the wisdom of launching a major new investment into the STAR eco-system which appeared to be bankrupt. Dakota’s response to these challenges was not satisfactory to Marco, and Marco refused the invitation.
• At that point Marco formed the Starseeds Clearness Committee and communicated his suspicions to Dakota. Between Saturday 2/4 and Friday 2/10 there were two meetings between the Clearness Committee and Dakota. In these meetings, which were recorded, Dakota made numerous statements about his investment offers which appeared to the committee to be out of alignment with what we call “Consensual Ethical Business Reality”. In other words, these are offers which would be laughed at in a traditional investment context, but which coming from Dakota (and his considerable charisma and “like-ability”), and being offers into the crypto field which most people don’t understand, people buy into.

Financial irregularities, out of integrities and other “red flags”

• On 1/26, Dakota requested a short-term loan from Simon Que, a Starseeds Advisor, of $3500, claiming that funds had been frozen in his dad’s Coinbase. Since then Dakota has not returned the money, despite frequent requests from Simon, making excuses such as that he didn’t want to pay the $15 Ethereum fee, that he’s busy working 22 days in a row, or that the money is stuck in transit.
• On 2/17, Marco Beneteau requested an OTC redemption of about $4k of StarQI that he owns. StarQI is an offer of Starseeds, and advertised by Dakota as a high-yield (roughly 30%) liquid wrapper for QI. Dakota has not, as yet, responded to Marco.
• There are other very suspicious financial transactions which we can’t disclose here due to confidentiality. 
• Dakota’s father, Jay Kaiser, has told an early DAO Fund investor, not to trust Dakota, that Dakota has in the past screwed him (Jay). We have other unfavorable character references from Dakota’s days as director of Earth Nation, an earlier culture-change initiative which subsequently failed. The apparent fact that Dakota’s own father does not trust Dakota, although inferential, we feel to be relevant to the case.  

Conclusion: Demands and hopes of this investigation

Due to the large number of suspicious elements and “red flags” which the committee has unearthed in only the first three weeks of this investigation, we are demanding from Dakota one thing immediately:

• His full cooperation with the investigation and an immediate stop of all new funding rounds and developments at Starseeds

Next, if the investigation DOES confirm unethical or unwise or fraudulent past offers and dealings of Dakota:

• That Dakota contribute the bulk of his remaining assets to a victims compensation fund. From which (to be negotiated) a portion be reserved for the funding of legitimate offers inside a new, raised-from-the-ashes Starseeds v3.
  The rationale for this is our belief that even if Dakota contributed all of his remaining assets to the victim’s  fund, it would be unlikely to compensate the victims more than 20%; whereas if a portion of future profits from Starseeds were allocated to the victims, it is conceivable that victims could be fully compensated. Note that the committee has not yet reached agreement on this, and that this decision is premature anyway until the value of the current legitimate projects of Starseeds is established (there ARE legitimate and potentially quite profitable projects inside Starseeds right now). We also hope that this strategy will provide Dakota an opportunity to redeem himself. 
• That Dakota set up a board of directors for Starseeds to oversee the operations of Starseeds v3, and that Dakota NOT have direct control of any assets for a “probation period” to be determined.

Finally: this is far from being a unanimous feeling inside the Clearness Committee, however: 

• Marco, at least, would like to believe that Dakota’s apparent errors of judgment and integrity are caused, at least in part, by excess of idealism or excess of zeal (meaning that he doesn’t actually intend harm). Marco’s belief will be confirmed or denied, by Dakota’s willingness to turn over all of his current assets to the committee.

Immediate Next Actions

Once again, if you are a victim of Dataka, please fill out the form 

If you are willing to give your time to the committee, and especially if you have specialized skills like crypto forensic accounting or legal expertise (or are just a plain hard worker and ideologically motivated), please write to [email protected] 

With love,

Marco and other members of the Clearness Committee, on 2/19/2023