OBike Refund in Singapore, Australia, and Malaysia

I think it&#x27;s becoming clear that (a) bike sharing is good to have in a city. People want it. (b) neither an all public or an all private system can work as well as we&#x27;d like it to.<p>The &quot;all public&quot; system means a municipality contracts a single vendor (or owns it) to build all the stations and manage everything. This is what we have where I live, dublin. It&#x27;s a stagnant system. They don&#x27;t add stations. Problems with stations being full&#x2F;empty at certain times of the day persist indefinitely. Basically, you can feel the lack of competition.<p>The all private system (like they have in China) is more innovative. They use technology better. You can feel the existence of competition. It&#x27;s more scalable with bikes, rides and users increasing all the time.<p>But... It makes a mess. Bikes everywhere. Companies can go bust, can chase market cap &amp; investment. Mostly, bikes end up abandoned all over the place.<p>This is fixable, for a local municipality that&#x27;s willing to get clever and design a market. Create infrastructure, mostly it&#x27;s the stations or the ability to rent space for them. Make rules, but not too many. Let competition happen within parameters.

OBike is also pulling all 600 bikes out of Zürich, Switzerland but there was no reason given, just that OBike will pay for the removal. [1]<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nzz.ch&#x2F;zuerich&#x2F;veloverleih-in-zuerich-o-bike-zieht-sich-zurueck-publibike-waechst-ld.1396483" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nzz.ch&#x2F;zuerich&#x2F;veloverleih-in-zuerich-o-bike-zie...</a>

As someone who is not familiar with oBike or the situation, could someone clue me in as to what happened?<p>My guess is that the company signed up a bunch of people, took a sizeable deposit from all of them, and then cut and run? Where does the ICO (or ICOs) come into the picture?

In kuala lumpur I was able to ride one of these. The experience to open one of them was easy. No card required. The bike app still showed 0min after 2 hours of biking. No deposit required.<p>The problem come when I wanted to lock the bike and finish the trip. It wouldn’t allow me to lock the bike. The app didn’t recognize the parking location and alerted to bring the bike to a one.<p>I ended up putting it somewhere on the streets unlocked. Anyone could have made use of it.

In Australia, oBikes were often thrown in to trees and rivers. They&#x27;ve left Melbourne. [0]<p>[0] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.abc.net.au&#x2F;news&#x2F;2018-06-12&#x2F;obike-dockless-bicycle-scheme-to-leave-melbourne&#x2F;9860314" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.abc.net.au&#x2F;news&#x2F;2018-06-12&#x2F;obike-dockless-bicycle...</a>

I&#x27;ve seen these bikes in some crazy places. There seems to be a minority of people who take joy in leaving them in not so easy to reach places.<p>2 examples I&#x27;ve seen.<p>- In the middle of a forest with at least 2KM of trail before the bike could be reached.<p>- Inside a secure defence facility.

For some context, here is a reply of the accused &#x2F; singled out person on their Twitter account:<p>&gt; Some fake news circulating around lately, to clarify: 1. I&#x27;m a shareholder of oBike, owning 23.58% stake, my title has always been Founding Investor&amp;Chairman in that company 2. Avazu was founded by me sorely, my grandparents are 80+ and can&#x27;t even handle computers<p>&gt; 3. oBike Singapore has been shut down due to economics, the decision was made among all shareholders, no need to generalize&#x2F;personalize 4. oBike has no intention or need to run away with deposit, instead the company is proactively looking for a solution with the related parties<p>&gt; 5. I&#x27;m an investor and shareholder in 100+ startups and companies globally, I&#x27;m also the direct founder of DotC United Group, some of these ventures cooperate with other block chain companies, that doesn&#x27;t mean all these companies belong to me.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;yishi888&#x2F;status&#x2F;1013667238191067136" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;yishi888&#x2F;status&#x2F;1013667238191067136</a>

It appears [0] that the deposit is &quot;up to&quot; $49 Singaporean Dollars or about $35 US Dollars<p>[0]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.channelnewsasia.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;singapore&#x2F;obike-working-to-refund-deposits-collect-remaining-bicycles-10488270" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.channelnewsasia.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;singapore&#x2F;obike-working...</a>

Maybe it&#x27;s time for a raw materials recycling startup. Cruise around the city with a van, pick up bikes, and sell them for scrap.

It looks like there is only a couple million $$ of paid up share capital in the paper trail. How did they finance purchase of so many oBikes?

What&#x27;s the connection between oBike and the ICOs (besides Yi Shi beeing involved in both)?

Until these companies work out how to manage the squishy bit that sits on them, the issues are only going to escalate - glorified litter the way some users leave them.

&quot;Only in August 2017 had oBike pulled off one of the largest series B rounds on record in Southeast Asia to raise US$45 million from a venture capital firm linked to a co-founder of Russia’s Mail.Ru Group a mysterious “leading global transportation platform” and several unnamed family offices in Southeast Asia. &quot;<p>1. I bet they got payed off, or they got their money laundered in some other way?<p>2. So many Chinese companies seem to go out of their way to be fraudulent; I don&#x27;t have much sympathy for investors anymore.<p>3. There used to be Investment Guys out there trying to expose shady Chinese companies, companies like NQ mobile, but I just don&#x27;t hear much from them. I guess they figure if you invest with shady entities, don&#x27;t expect your money back?<p>4. I love the back stories on these boy geniuses. Just lie until you thrive?

obike shut down? I remember they were all over Amsterdam last year

I’m pretty sure it’s not legal to shut down one subsidary and not return the deposits if the rest of the company continues operating.

I just got back from Portland Oregon and used biketownpdx.com several times, it was fine. The only issue was that the bikes were heavy. $20&#x2F;mo for daily usage was great.