JoongAng, the most popular South Korean mainstream media outlet recently reported that an alleged scam developed by a local teenager caused much turmoil amongst the seasoned crypto investors who are always on the lookout for newer coin alternatives to increase their earning base. Bitcoin Platinum was the name imparted to this latest Bitcoin hard fork by its official twitter handle @bitcoinplatinum which advertised about the same.
The Bitcoin Platinum creator had claimed earlier this month that a hard fork of the Bitcoin protocol shall be set about by developers, miners, Bitcoin users and investors just as the block reaches the block size of 498577. However no information about developers, supporters, miners or investors had yet been revealed by the Twitter account. The Bitcoin community of South Korea had since the very beginning remained skeptical about the Bitcoin Platinum project given its vague vision and description even before these recent turn of events.
Bitcoin Platinum had given a tagline that it wished to achieve, “Satoshi’s original vision of Bitcoin as decentralized electronic cash,” which seemed like a rip off from the vision of Bitcoin Cash which was hard forked during August earlier this year. Other than the PR gibberish no other value adding information had been revealed by the Bitcoin Platinum account thus accentuating the level of skepticism. One statement put up in Bitcoin Platinum’s twitter site stated that,
“Bitcoin Platinum brings true Blockchain ledger to the world. Merchants and users are empowered with low fees and reliable confirmations. The future shines brightly with unrestricted growth, global adoption, permissionless innovation and decentralized development.”
Since the very beginning, Bitcoin Platinum’s twitter account had been resorting to English for advertising regarding its campaign. However on 10th December it announced for the first time in a highly informal Korean tone that, “[Bitcoin] shorting very good,” and “so who told you to buy Bitcoin, shorting [Bitcoin] is the best.”
Once the crypto experts went through these comments, they became absolutely sure that all such publicity stunts were entered into just to bring down the price of Bitcoin by bringing about a hard fork and reap immense profit from this short-term price trend. South Korean mainstream media houses agreed in unison that the concept of Bitcoin Platinum was developed by a South Korean teenager who just wished to tamper with the growth surge of this much sought after crypto currency. Subsequently the teenager took to the same twitter handle of Bitcoin Platinum to apologize to the general public. He was quoted as saying that,
“Please forgive me. Bitcoin Platinum is a scam coin. I created the project to earn five mln Korean won ($4,590).”
The crypto plethora have for long been used by malicious hackers and scammers to defraud investors from their hard earned money. This also served as the biggest reason behind certain governments such as China into bringing about a complete crypto ban.
A $200 million Ponzi scheme was busted last month. This scheme is known to have targeted middle-aged investors. A Bitcoin consultancy firm was established by the Ponzi scheme operators in Seoul which lured in unsuspecting investors by offering magnanimous profit margins and claiming that the corpus shall be invested in Bitcoin for garnering bigger returns in days to come. The masterminds behind the Ponzi scheme were put behind bars as the local police department was requested by general investors to investigate the same. The operators did not issue any payouts to the investors for several months which just added to the cause of confusion.
Such background scenarios have caused the South Korean government to become all the more cautious regarding their take on cryptocurrencies. A task force is scheduled to be formed by five commissions and ministries including the ministry of finance and strategy to come up with policies which shall regulate the cryptocurrency market of South Korea.
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Tarunima Ghosh Laha is a Finance Post Grad from St. Xaviers who believes Finance is more than just Balance Sheets and Ledger creation. This filmy bookworm who believes she was a sloth in past life also nourishes a penchant of owning a private zoo someday. Equipped with a laptop and online Lexicon she is all set to give finance a glamorous makeover in the form of exciting writeups with bang on info and flashy new words.
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