[Sealy]

I totally agree, poor moral standard is at the root of a lot of shady investors.

I run a VC backed bitcoin startup myself and more then one of the investors we pitched to as early back as two years ago have gone on to create their own bitcoin-related companies in suspiciously similar product verticals to ours.

[jacquesm]

Do better vetting. You pitched to your would-be competitors, not to your potential investors. In the 'angel' (what an interesting choice of word that was) investor world this sort of thing is done far more frequently than in the VC investor scene. Entirely different groups, though the former tend to try to make money when the latter enters the scene (and it's not rare to see angel investors be re-educated about the nature of investing during later rounds).