Investigation: Octopus Entertainment may be involved in financial fraud, and the management said it was dangerous

"Tens of thousands of games will be merged into our platform, and what we want to build is a game empire in the blockchain world..." In a live broadcast with over 10,000 views, the man who claimed to be Brother Ye drew a big picture for Octopus Entertainment. cake.

This is not the first time that the Octopus Entertainment team has used words such as "blockchain" and "game" to publicize. Previously, the Octopus Entertainment team has repeatedly stated that it will create the world's first "blockchain + social + game". The fact is that the octopus entertainment team’s “entry fee of 398 yuan”, “sharing the benefits of hoarding coins at lower levels” and “rewards for pulling people’s heads” are wandering on the edge of the law.

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398 yuan entry, the more people you pull, the greater the profit

"Pay 398 yuan, you can become an octopus member, enjoy all octopus benefits, and give you a T-shirt, power bank..."

The gameplay of Octopus Entertainment is not complicated, and even very similar to the mechanism of traditional MLM teams. You only need to pay a membership fee of 398 yuan to become an octopus catcher (which can be understood as a junior agent). The octopus entertainment team provides new members with symbolic products such as octopus balls (the official token of the project), T-shirts and charging treasures.

The octopus entertainment system has designed three levels - octopus catcher, ether catcher and bit catcher. An octopus catcher directly promotes 5 octopus catchers, and when the team reaches 30 people, it will be promoted to an ether catcher; an ether catcher directly promotes 5 ether teams, and when the team reaches 1,000 people, it can be upgraded to a bit catcher.

"The next time I stock up on 10,000 octopus balls, I can sign up to 5 octopus balls." An octopus catcher told Odaily that after becoming an octopus catcher, in addition to daily check-in benefits, more income comes from pulling people's heads into the market. Get dynamic income.

To put it simply, in the operation model of Octopus Entertainment, the more heads each catcher catches, the more platform rewards, the more coins hoarded by the subordinates, and the greater the income of the superiors.

"Every time you pull a person, the platform will reward you with octopus balls worth 100 yuan. My next family has already hoarded coins, and everyone has 100,000 octopus balls in their hands. If the next family hoards coins, they can also share his Earn money by hoarding money, isn’t it just making money while lying down?” According to this octopus catcher member, the amount of coins hoarded by the lower family directly affects the income of the superior, the more coins the lower family hoards, the greater the income of the upper family.

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Many games in the app are not online

"The mall will be launched soon. You can buy things in the mall. In the future, you can earn octopus balls by walking and watching the news... In the future, an octopus park will be built in Jinhua, Zhejiang, where you can use octopus balls to pay for eating, drinking, and entertainment...Octopus Maru is going to be listed on the exchange soon, and after listing on the exchange, it will definitely double, and now is the best time to enter the game!"

Octopus Entertainment once publicized that octopus balls will circulate in its internal ecology. In the future, octopus balls will be used in games, social networking, payment, life, funds, live broadcast, health, wallets, etc.

Octopus Ball (PS) is the official token of the current Octopus Entertainment team, with a total issuance of 24 billion pieces.

In the live promotion, the man who called himself Ye Ge revealed: "The 2.0 version of Octopus Entertainment will connect with hundreds, thousands or even 10,000 game parties, and every brand and game is holding our token like a small island ( octopus balls), because the settlement system is token.”

Is the ecology of octopus entertainment really as perfect as advertised?

The Odaily reporter immediately downloaded and tried the application products of Octopus Entertainment. The reporter found that the types of games connected in the application were far less than the big pie promised by Ye Ge, and only 18 game applications were launched.

Most of the 18 game apps are single-form games such as Lianliankan, Pinpinball, 2048, and Fight the Landlord. Among them, 4 games need to be purchased with octopus balls, but none of them are online.

At the same time, the octopus live broadcast, game mall, life mall and other functions in the octopus entertainment application have not yet been fully developed. The live broadcast section does not have any live broadcast content, the game mall section only has the function of recharging octopus balls, and the life shopping mall section directly displays "system maintenance".

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Multi-party cooperation and mutual endorsement? The management also felt a little confused

"In September this year, Mr. Ye gave some 'baby octopuses' an ultra-low private placement price to buy ABS, and now it has doubled. Now there is a new project, Neptune E-sports, and you have the opportunity to get funds if you join the membership Private placement price."

In the process of contacting insiders of Octopus Entertainment, Odaily reporters found that the Octopus Entertainment team also bought other project tokens at low prices as preferential conditions to attract users.

At the annual meeting held by Octopus Entertainment on January 9, Ye Ding, the founder of Octopus Entertainment, mentioned the Neptune e-sports project many times, saying that the Neptune e-sports project is a new benefit for Octopus members. Everyone has a quota of 1,000 yuan to participate in the project.

The reporter of Odaily found through consulting public information that the Neptune e-sports project currently promoted by the Octopus Entertainment team is almost the same as the operation mode of Octopus Entertainment, and users need to earn profits by pulling people's heads.

At the same time, information such as "received Li Xiaolai's angel round investment" and "strategic cooperation with Huobi.com" are also one of the endorsements used in the project's daily use.

On the official website of Octopus Entertainment, it is written that the cornerstone round investors of the project include Contract Capital, TECO Fund, Warp Speed ​​Capital, Zeyuan Investment and (Li Xiaolai) Coin Capital.

The Odaily reporter verified from Lao Tian, ​​a partner of Coin Capital, that Coin Capital had indeed invested in Octopus Entertainment. Will vote."

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Is it legal to issue virtual currency? Lawyer’s Analysis: Essentially Fundraising

"The company we are backed by has business qualifications and an actual place of operation. It is in Jinhua, Zhejiang, with an address of more than 1,500 square meters. You can definitely come and inspect it." Insiders of Octopus Entertainment told Odaily reporters many times that the team behind Octopus Entertainment Supported by Zhejiang Shrimp Technology Co., Ltd.

Odaily found through Tianyan’s data that Zhejiang Dingxia Technology Co., Ltd. was registered in July 2017. The legal person is Ye Ding (also the founder of Octopus Entertainment). Its registered capital is 10 million, but the paid-in capital column is 0. . At the same time, the industrial and commercial data in Tianyancha also shows that the company has less than 50 employees and only 5 people insured.

"Our Octopus is the first team to obtain the legal virtual currency issuance qualification, which is almost completely legal." The network culture business license obtained by Zhejiang Dingxia Technology Co., Ltd. is also one of the key information for the agency of Octopus Entertainment to export and promote its project. one.

Odaily noticed that in the network culture business license obtained by Zhejiang Dingxia Technology Co., Ltd., its business scope is "use of information network to operate game products (including online game virtual currency issuance)".

Does this mean that Octopus Entertainment can legally issue tokens?

Odaily reporters consulted the "Interim Measures for the Administration of Online Games (Revised in 2017)" and found that Article 19 clarified the scope of use of online game virtual currency: "The scope of use of online game virtual currency is limited to the exchange of online game products and services provided by itself. May not be used to pay for, purchase in kind, or exchange for other units of products and services."

Afterwards, the Odaily reporter consulted professional lawyers, and lawyer Guo Yatao of the chain law team analyzed that:

"All game virtual currency must be a commercial closed loop, which can only be used for one-way recharge. That is to say, only RMB can be used to buy game currency, and game currency is used to buy game props. This is a complete one-way closed loop. "

Guo Yatao believes that the current operation mode of Octopus Entertainment is essentially a fund-raising behavior, which may be involved in ICO: "Game currency cannot be exchanged with RMB in two directions, and exchanging game currency for RMB is a disguised way to link game currency and RMB. It’s actually a fundraising act.”

Even though the octopus balls issued by Octopus Entertainment have not yet been traded on the exchange, its publicity materials have mentioned the plan to list the octopus balls many times.

In addition, many octopus entertainment catcher agents contacted by the Odaily reporter all admitted that there are currently two channels for the acceptance of octopus balls and RMB through on-site transactions and over-the-counter transactions, and most of the over-the-counter transactions exist in the form of WeChat groups.

On August 24, 2018, the Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission and other five ministries and commissions jointly issued the "Risk Warning on Preventing Risk Fundraising in the Name of "Virtual Currency" and "Blockchain"". "Static income" (profit from currency appreciation) and "dynamic income" (profit from offline development) are used as bait to attract the public to invest funds, and lure investors and development personnel to join in, constantly expanding the fund pool, with illegal fundraising, pyramid schemes, Characteristics of illegal activities such as fraud. But in essence, this kind of activity uses "financial innovation" as a gimmick, and is essentially a Ponzi scheme of "borrowing new money to repay old money", and the operation of funds is difficult to maintain for a long time.

"The risk warning pointed out a direction for everyone. In the field of virtual currency, these possible phenomena are actually fund-raising behaviors in the final analysis." Guo Yatao said, "Some opinions on the Internet say that blockchain games are the only ones that can be legally released in the future. The currency model, this is completely nonsense, the essence of issuing currency is to raise funds, as long as it is a fundraising behavior, whether it is a game or something else, there is a problem."