Skill Dragon Review: SMT reboot with cryptocurrency mining
Skill Dragon launched late last year as a mobile games e-sports venture.
If you’ve never heard of Skill Dragon or have and have been waiting for a BehindMLM review for some time, that’s because promotion of Skill Dragon is pretty low-key.
A visit to the Skill Dragon website reveals a maintenance message that, as I understand it, has been static for months:
Now if I was evaluating Skill Dragon outside of BehindMLM, this is where my due diligence would begin and end. Any MLM company that doesn’t even have a website clearly has something to hide and should be avoided at all costs.
Seeing as this is BehindMLM and you’re expecting an in-depth Skill Dragon review, let’s press on.
Skill Dragon is part of Smart Media Technologies, who previously marketed the YOBSN social media network.
Smart Media Technologies was essentially a recruitment-driven pyramid scheme. YOBSN was merely a ruse to hide recruitment commissions behind, with the social network itself failing to take off.
After police in India arrested top Smart Media Technologies executives in late 2014, Smart Media Technologies went into rapid decline.
Skill Dragon was launched in response to Smart Media Technologies collapsing.
The initial e-games business model failed to catch on and was short-lived. Visit the Skill Dragon website with an affiliate referral code and you’ll see the site is still branded around e-sports gaming, however the current opportunity has been completely revamped.
Today Skill Dragon has nothing to do with mobile e-sports, with the scheme rebooted as a cryptocurrency mining pool.
Skill Dragon affiliates pay $600 to join the company and then $30 a month to remain commission qualified.
Once signed up, affiliates can invest between $500 to $10,000:
- Level 1 – $500
- Level 2 – $1000
- Level 3 -$2000
- Level 4 – $2500
- Level 5 – $5000
- Level 6 – $10,000
At the time of publication there are two tiers of investment, referred to bitcoin and ethereum mining pools.
Investment at Levels 4 to 6 designates a Skill Dragon affiliate as a “Founder”, which provides them access to a Founder’s Pool.
This Founder’s Pool is presumably made up of a percentage of invested funds company-wide, shared between Skill Dragon Founders.
Residual commissions are paid out via a binary compensation structure.
A binary compensation structure places a Skill Dragon affiliate at the top of a binary team, split into two sides (left and right):
The first level of the binary team has two positions, with the second level splitting each of these two positions into another two positions each (4 positions).
In this manner subsequent levels of the binary team are generated as needed, with each level having double the number of positions as the previous level.
Positions in the binary team are filled via direct and indirect recruitment of Skill Dragon affiliates.
Investment volume (including re-investment) is tracked on both sides of the binary, with a commission paid out each time $600 on one side of the binary is matched with $300 on the other.
For every $600 matched with $300 (amounts can be matched on either side of the binary), a Skill Dragon affiliate receives a $50 commission.
Regarding the investment into the bitcoin and ethereum pools, ROIs are paid out daily.
These ROIs are purportedly paid out of cryptocurrency mining, however there is no information about Skill Dragon’s purported mining operations on their website.
As far as a Skill Dragon affiliate is concerned, all they are doing is investing funds and collecting a daily passive ROI.
Irrespective of whether actual mining is taking place or not, this constitutes a securities offering.
This is significant because, according to the Skill Dragon Terms and Conditions, the company is based out of Nevada in the US;
Jurisdiction and venue of any matter not subject to arbitration shall reside exclusively in Carson City, State of Nevada.
There is nothing on the Skill Dragon website suggesting the company has registered its securities offering with the SEC.
The US is currently the second largest source of traffic to the Skill Dragon website, coming at 14.1%.
South Africa is the largest source of traffic at 84.4% and clearly where Skill Dragon is primarily being promoted.
In the Skill Dragon promotional videos I watched for this review, the purported mining operations are represented by familiar “numbers on a screen”.
In essence, you have affiliates believing Skill Dragon is paying them through the backoffice, however most affiliates are “compounding” their earnings at this stage.
Withdrawal requests are low and Skill Dragon is able to keep up appearances.
Remembering that this is the same company that ran the Smart Media Technologies pyramid scheme, there’s a good chance that, while some mining might be taking place, newly invested funds are being used to pay off existing investors.
Note that any new funds used to pay off existing investors would deem Skill Dragon a Ponzi scheme, regardless of what percentage of ROIs paid out were attributable to mining operations.
Worst case scenario there’s no mining going on, best case scenario the ROIs paid out are still likely just recycled funds.
I say this because on top of the mining operations you’ve also got recruitment commissions to consider. This drains available funds for mining operations (on top of withdrawal requests), which drags down the sustainability of Skill Dragon’s daily ROI offering.
They might get away with while the majority of their affiliates are busy reinvesting at close to 100% to get their “gigahash” balances up. However once enough of affiliates start withdrawing what’s represented on their screens as real money, things are going to get messy.
That’s if the SEC don’t shut Skill Dragon down first for offering unregistered securities.
In the event Skill Dragon collapses or a regulator shuts them down, the use of bitcoin to invest in the mining pools means recovery of funds will be difficult.
Great for Skill Dragon management, not so good for the majority of investors who wind up losing money.
Update 12th March 2017 – In early 2017 it was announced Skill Dragon and Dragon Mining will be rebooting as Lifestyle Galaxy.
As suspected this is a ponzi.
The leaders in South Africa go on about having the best and most secure Bitcoin mine in the world but there is little evidence of actual mining. Their so called social network and gaming before this were flops.
No one outside of the member base has ever heard of any of their useless products. It’s all about recruitment of new members to generate revenue to pay to the guys at the top.
I live in South Africa and not a week goes by without someone unfortunate enough to join this mlm program finds me and finds out about my interest in bitcoin and invites me to this ponzi.
I’m not a sucker anymore though and can direct them to this site to get educated.
Hi,
Their mining site with all details can be found at dragonminingsystems.com
(Ozedit: recruitment spam removed)
The websites contain full leadership information. The mining operation has been physically inspected and the website has photos of the mining facilities.
eSports has been running since 2008 and is still vibrant & running as part of the SMT Group.
Your assessment is fundamentally flawed. Please go back; do proper research and ask questions.
Please don’t try to sneak in your recruitment scam under the guise of providing information.
The websites were devoid of management information at the time of publication.
By who?
Which has what to do with Skill Dragon? Y’know, beyond the ruse.
nothing to do with Skill Dragon or Smart Media Technologies and is a red herring.
Here’s a question:
I invest $x in Skill Dragon. Skill Dragon pay me a >100% ROI. The only source of verifiable revenue entering Skill Dragon is affiliate investment.
What does that spell?
The photos on the website show the SA Executive Leader, Tony de Gouveia on site.
The mining operation equipment is owned by the members of Skill Dragon.
eSports is a division of SST as is Skill Dragon.
The source of revenue in Skill Dragon is Bitcoin, Ethereum, Expanse and Z-Cash (soon to be added) via mining and verified via the Blockchain.
You cannot invest in Skill Dragon i.e. acquire shares in the company. You are purchasing a mining contract which goes to the purchase of physical equipment which is purchased and shipped to site from China. Once installed, you start receiving mining rewards via the Blockchain.
I doubt that you purchased a contract in Skill Dragon (wholesale with affiliate marketing for Networkers) or Dragon Mining Systems (retail without affiliate marketing for non-Networkers) as you would have known better to quote >100% ROI and also would have exact knowledge of how the revenue is generated.
The answer is simple…purchase a $25 contract on Dragon Mining Systems, compound for 12 months and then review your findings. (Do not expect great shakes with only $25 but it will be indicative and will exclude all affiliate related revenue).
It’s a bit trite to resort to the “try us and find out how good we are” gambit, very old hat.
Photos of miners have no value, similar to the likely returns on investment, as Bitclub Network has shown and which Dragon closely resembles in hype and type (Founders pool, entry fee, compounding).
Does Dragon have anything to do with The Ultimate Business clowns?
@Garth
On site of what though? It wouldn’t be the first time token cloud mining photos have been used to push an MLM underbelly scheme.
Why does an MLM company need divisions?
So Skill Dragon is free to join and affiliates aren’t investing up to $10,000?
I deposit funds with Skill Dragon and Skill Dragon pay me a passive ROI. That’s an investment.
I don’t need to join a Ponzi scheme to understand how one works.
The cryptomining MLM Ponzi is a pretty old now (BitClub Network has been doing it for a while). You invest and they use newly invested funds to slowly pay you out.
You as an affiliate cannot dollar for dollar verify your ROI was in any way generated via mining.
Some token mining typically takes place, if only for investors such as yourself to be able to run around the internet claiming legitimacy.
Garth, or may I call you Myric, I fear you protest too much (‘myrical networkers’ that’s so cute).
You appear to have abandoned your bitclub.network franchise (not before nicking their Fiverr videos and ‘celeb endorsements’) and set out on your own in the crazy world of MLM crypto mining, seeing as there’s “20% per month” roi up for grabs, along with your coterie of pimps who kindly provide user testimonials for Dragon.
A similar scenario will play out for bottom of the pyramid Dragon miners as it did for sucked in BitClub Networkers: minimal real world returns from rented/token mining equipment will be spread thinner and thinner as you sign up crypto-naive suckers by the bucketload.
When they realise that the mining was only another hook to hang another matrix on it will be too late for them, locked in and fleeced by the Founders.
How’s your Futurenet crap coming along?
For what it’s worth Garth spat the dummy and tried to publish one of those “rahrah I’m never coming back” type comments. It was spam-binned.
Totally didn’t address how using newly invested funds to pay off existing investors isn’t a Ponzi scheme.
If you ask me Garth only came here to drop his affiliate link. Seeing as that got removed there was nothing else in it for him.
That he was involved in BCN and Futurenet is hardly surprising.
Perhaps Andrew Eaton or Tony de Gouveia can provide some answers here.
They assure members that they have one of the the safest and largest crypto mines in the world and that they are not in any way a Ponzi scheme.
Dragon Mine (or is it Skill Dragon? I can never figure out the difference!) now have “Retail Mining” contracts starting at $25 up to $500.
Buying one of those doesn’t seem to require joining the whole network marketing part of the “business”. What do you think of those retail mining contracts?
And do those Dragon Mine “Retail Mining” changes warrant an updated review by you? I would love to read your opinion…
I think it’s a desperate attempt at pseudo-compliance that will flop.
Non-affiliates aren’t interested in investing in Ponzi points. Would you invest in Ponzi points knowing a bunch of greedy scammers “got in first” and just want to take your money?
Also Skill Dragon continue to market securities without having registered with a securities regulator in any jurisdiction they operate in.
Are commissions paid out on the retail contracts?
I have been reading comments. Any new take on skill dragon since November 2016?
Why would there be a “new take” if the compensation plan (business model) remains unchanged?
Now they are calling themselves Lifestyle Galaxy. How many names so far? Smart Media,yobsn,skill dragon, dragon mine, lifestyle Galaxy …
@ Mike, the reason the name change has occured is actually very simple to explain.
With Skill Dragon the branding was games focussed.
But the company has also got quite a few other product lines including:
1. Mining of Bitcoin and other REAL alt currencies.
2. An Auction site
3. An educational games platform.
4. Personal devlopment platform.
After consulting with branding experts it was decided the name Lifestyle Galaxy better described what the compaany does rather than just Skill Dragon being games focussed.
Quite simple and logical really. Nothing cynical in that. I know because I was part of the team called in to discuss thee rebranding.
(Ozedit: Offtopic derail attempt removed)
Oz, you only require a securities exchange license if you are selling mining contracts in the USA and Canada. This is because Bitcoin is regarded as currency in those countries.
This is why we are not open in the USA even though our mine is there and we mine 100% legally there. We like to comply with the law you see. 🙂
We operate 100% legally in every other country where we are in because in those countries Bitcoin is regarded as an asset/commodity and one does not need a securities exchange license to sell mining equipment ( ie computers) in those countries.
If you still doubt that I would be very happy to put you in touch with our attorneys who have advised us on this very matter and who are also one of the largest law firms in the world.
In every country we operate in we ensure we comply 100% with the laws of that country.
@Andrew
Oh please. Smart Media Technologies execs were arrested in India.
Smart Media Technologies changes it’s name to Skill Dragon.
Skill Dragon Ponzi collapsed.
Skill Dragon changes it’s name to Lifestyle Galaxy.
Just a new ruse to lure new suckers into the scam these guys have been running for years.
False. You need one if you’re offering any kind of security to US residents.
This is the biggest red flag potential Lifestyle Galaxy investors should not ignore.
There’s only one reason an MLM company offering an investment opportunity doesn’t operate in the US. Ponzi.
Lifestyle Galaxy is operating illegally in any country it is soliciting investment from without registration from the appropriate securities regulator.
A guy claiming to be one of the owners on Dragon Mining in youtube vidoes and is listed as a director on one of the websites, is one of the guys who was promoting collapsed bitcoin mining ponzi websites in the past.
The SAME guy removed all my comments on their videos where I shot down all their so called ‘proof’….subsequently, lots of people who believed him lost money.
Andrew is the top leader making his money thru David Martin Ponzi scams his been involve with David Martin since 2011.
David Martin is the brain behind the technology of these Ponzi scams, He started Smart Media Technology & Home Page Pays & Yobsn & Skill Dragan (games ) integrated with mining and network marketing comp plan.
Andrew Eaton (above Andrew) is here in South Africa, Stay away from him. Dangerous.
I work with David Martin and I can tell you the truth about what David Martin did,he stole millions of dollars from people in Australia & New Zealand & Malaysia & South Africa etc.
David didn’t help a woman who got arrested for Ponzi (YOBSN Google it) which was one of David scam, Andrew Ethan has been with David scams since 2011. Don’t Join Andrew.
I invested in this company 4 odd years ago when it was still Yobsn. The company changes so much, you run out of track how to do marketing etc.
I spent quite a bit on training, monthly memberships etc, yet it is not easy to get a return on your investment. I would feel very bad if I signed someone up, and they would end up like me, struggling to get a return.
The leaders seem to get into big seminars and have a quite a bit of lot of people signing up in one day to grow their team.
Unless you can do presentations, have a loud voice etc, this is not easy. When I speak to prospects, the questions they ask are difficult to answer to convince them to join the business.
Sadly if you are one that battles to take this business to the next level, you don’t get support from the leaders.
Ah yes, you get taught in the training events that you have to sit down with your newly signed up member, and show them the ropes, what to do, what their goals are to help them reach that level.
That was never done with me (and others) and when you approach a leader to help you with that, the attitude you get back is that you are not even on level 1 yet, I don’t want to waste time with someone who is not big already as I am not making money from you…