Cambridge Analytica Was Planning on Holding an ICO for Personal Data Market

The political data firm known as Cambridge Analytica has been under massive media pressure during the last couple of days, given the Facebook scandal, where the company accessed the user data of millions of Facebook users. For those who do not know, Cambridge Analytica used the said data to build psychological profiles of voters.

Now, reports indicate that the company had been quietly planning to create its very own digital currency, as part of their Initial Coin Offering.  Britanny Kaiser, who is a former employee of the data company, disclosed that the goal of the ICO was to raise money needed for building a system that would allow users to store and sell their data to advertisers. There is a bit of dark humour involved, since the idea was to help protect personal data from being accessed without consent, which is mostly what the company did when they managed to obtain the information of 87 million Facebook users.

The ICO plans were being overseen by the company’s chief executive in Britain, who has since been removed from the company, following a scandal. For those who do not know, Alexander Nix was reportedly recorded while bragging about Cambridge Analytica’s involvement in politics, and their strategies to help entrap political opponents.

It is believed that Cambridge Analytica begun dwelling into the digital currency market last year, when the ICO project was first considered. Not only this, but there are several reports stating that the data company also helped blockchain-related start-ups target investors for their ICOs, using predictive modelling and a few other algorithms.

In a NY Times statement, Jill Carlson, a consultant that attended a few of the company’s meetings, mentioned that: ‘The way that Cambridge Analytica was talking about it (digital currencies), they were viewing it as a means of being able to basically inflict government control and private corporate control over individuals, which just takes the whole initial premise of this technology and turns it on its head in this very dystopian way’.

It is unclear whether at this time, Cambridge Analytica still has plans to develop the system or hold the ICO. However, given the mass of negative attention the data firm has received, it is unlikely that this will happen anytime in the near future.