Before the collapse of the "tens of billions of funds" PlusToken, users recharged their beliefs every day

Produced | Odaily (ID: o-daily)

Produced | Odaily (ID: o-daily)

"Walking with PlusToken every day", "Blue sky and white clouds, sunshine and rain, Plus Token is with you and me."

"PlusToken, a wallet that combines technology and dreams."

Every day for half a year, Louise will unshakably post good morning dynamics or viral slogans like Moments. Even though the general market is rising, from pancakes to altcoins are rising, Louise does not forget to cheer for PlusToken in the circle of friends: "endure loneliness, keep prosperity", "do not speculate in coins, only move bricks, only PlusToken "...

When the PlusToken project was in full swing, the brainwashing publicity content about the project spread across the circle of friends of various currency circles, and even made you suspect that you are the one who has no faith.

Until recently, according to several users, the PlusToken that rescued Louise in dire straits began to be unable to withdraw cash, and his circle of friends "completely transformed" into Suiyianjinghao.

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Once a dream wallet, now it is impossible to withdraw cash

On July 1, the official WeChat account of "Fengwang Blockchain" stated that the Vanuatu police force arrested six Chinese nationals, six of whom may be involved in illegal Internet fraud, suspected of being the founding team of PlusToken. Two days ago, the British "Daily Mail" also reported the news on June 29, but the report did not clearly state that it was the founding team of PlusToken.

Previously, according to Caijing.com’s financial report, none of the more than 400 Plustoken investors who contacted it successfully withdrew cash; the collapse of PlusToken, the first fund project in the currency circle, may be a foregone conclusion. Caijing.com also quoted a person close to the police as saying that the amount involved in PlusToken may be 20 billion yuan.

During the period when tokens could not be withdrawn, PlusToken officials used technical updates as a reason to appease investors. Later, they also said that they were affected by the Indian digital asset exchange, and they also prevaricated with reasons such as slow confirmation speed of miners and congestion of the Bitcoin network.

At the same time, the inability of PlusToken to withdraw cash instantly caused panic among investors. At the same time, the theory that "the project party ran away" could not be verified. Panic and intense discussions spread in the PlusToken community and post bars.

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Claiming that Google and Samsung account for 17% of the shares, the real founding team is confusing

In fact, in terms of the founding team, the actual team of PlusToken has always been a mystery.

In the early text version of the white paper, PlusToken stated that it was developed by the original technical team of Samsung and Google with many years of experience, and the research and development laboratory was in Seoul, South Korea. At the same time, it was mentioned in an initial official promotional material that its founder is LEO, a Google AlphaGo algorithm researcher, and its co-founder is Kim Jong-in, the core technology of the Samsung team. PlusToken claims that Google and Samsung account for 17% of its shares.

The co-founder LEO from Russia is one of the only two members of PlusToken publicly. LEO with a foreign face often attends and is active in PlusToken's major activities.

After going online, PlusToken began to shape its self-image.

According to public information, PlusToken not only appeared on the big screens of Zhongguancun and NASDAQ, but also held offline activities in South Korea, Japan and other countries, and even met with British Crown Prince Charles for a group photo.

As for the doubts about the vague identity of the founding team members, the official explained that they don’t need to care about the team, and Satoshi Nakamoto did not show up.

The rumor about the two founders of PlusToken, LEO and Kim Jong-in, is that both LEO and Kim Jong-in may be puppets.

On July 1, the Weibo content released by the official Weibo of "Feng.com Blockchain" included a picture of six people's head portraits. These six people who were rumored to be members of the PlusToken team attracted people's attention.

Among them, the member named "chenbo" (Chen Bo) in the lower right of the picture was once exposed by the public account "Brother of Conscience of Coin Circle" from the media.

Chen Bo's pseudonym Chen Zihan walks the rivers and lakes in the currency circle, and Chen Zihan also claims to be the first person in PlusToken China. The conscientious brother in the currency circle once quoted netizens who broke the news that Chen Zihan fled in a hurry due to the investigation by the mainland police. He said that Chen has been vigorously promoting PlusToken since 2018, and at least made hundreds of millions of money from it.

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Borrowing the name of the blockchain to play funds, was investigated and dealt with by Hunan officials in March

In April 2018, the PlusToken digital currency wallet was launched. In the publicity, it claimed to be the second largest digital currency wallet in the world, and declared that it wanted to be Alipay in the blockchain.

In addition to the digital currency storage function of ordinary wallets, PlusToken also claims to be a digital currency arbitrage quantitative transaction wallet, which adopts the smart dog to move bricks mode to help users profit from the price difference between exchanges. And only users who hold more than $500 in tokens can start the smart dog moving brick mode.

In an early white paper, PlusToken introduced that investors deposit 1 million yuan, and compound interest can earn 7 million yuan a year. After turning on smart moving bricks, users can get 10% to 30% monthly income in addition to capital preservation.

High profits have become a major factor attracting users to enter the market.

"If there are such high returns in this world, what do people still have to work for?" Yang Zhou, founder of the decentralized bank PayPal Wallet, said bluntly.

Jack Hu, CEO of BitGlobal, a professional quantitative team, also believes that 10% to 30% is "unreasonable": "The income of brick-and-mortar arbitrage before May 2018 was quite high, but because the market opportunity is only so big, there are many people who leave There is no way to go, so the income of brick arbitrage in the future becomes very low. At present, the yield of brick arbitrage is generally around 3 points per month."

In addition, PlusToken has launched a hierarchical pipeline income model to encourage users to develop offline with high commissions. In its publicity, it is said that the development of downlines can also get high commissions. Users directly develop a downline reward of 100%, and the rewards of the second to tenth floors are 10%. There is no level limit for promotion rewards.

In addition, according to public reports, PlusToken accounts are also divided into four levels: big household, big coffee, big god, and founder. This not only requires direct promotion of users, but also requires recommended users to activate the smart dog brick-moving mode to obtain corresponding benefits. , the income dividends obtained by each level are different, and the founding level is even promised additional platform monthly and annual rebate dividends. The similar model is very similar to the model of pyramid schemes and funds.

In fact, as early as November 2018, some self-media had exposed that Plus Token was essentially "false quantification, real pyramid scheme".

The media said that since the ETH recharge mode was launched in September 2018, the tokens deposited by users will be automatically transferred to a private account, but almost all the tokens can only be withdrawn. This means that "moving bricks and arbitrage" may not actually be carried out. The self-media comment: (PlusToken) is just a game of collecting coins and dividing coins.

"The brick-and-mortar arbitrage that can take out a monthly profit between 10% and 30% is actually not a real brick-and-mortar. It is necessary to realize the transaction between the platform and the platform. The currency is placed in the platform. How to realize the profit from the price difference when the transaction is generated?" Jack Hu directly expressed his doubts to Odaily.

But on the other hand, the enthusiasm of leeks is beyond imagination. According to the media statistics, in early May 2018, the PlusToken wallet address initially only had more than 100 ETH, but by November 2018, it had increased to more than 90,000 ETH.

At the same time, this high-risk model has also attracted regulatory attention.

In February 2019, the Wenyuan Police Station of Tianxin District, Changsha City investigated and dealt with the "PlusToken Wallet" MLM propaganda den in Changsha. The report on this incident clearly mentioned that the "PlusToken Wallet" is just wearing the recently popular "blockchain" vest, under the guise of innovation, to deceive investors, but in essence it still charges entry fees and develops offline. The three characteristics of MLM, tiered payment, are typical MLM activities.

But even so, the funds that sell the fantasy of "getting rich" are still popular among a large number of leeks, and they have begun to spread across the country and even overseas.

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Leek Daily Moments Recharge Faith, "Crash" But Instantly

The reporter of Odaily learned from Tencent’s MLM and fund self-examination applets that PlusToken and its associated PlusToken wallet project will be marked 1126 times, and the main tags marked are “declare high-yield”, “cottage virtual currency area” block chain".

The true identity of the team is a mystery, the income is abnormally high, etc., these are the typical characteristics of the capital market. However, judging from the current situation, the project has not been identified by the public security department, and it is impossible to confirm whether the team has run away. Before the public security department or its founding members give a strong response, this project may just disappear in the wind and rain.

In fact, this is also the final outcome of most pyramid schemes.

"According to the current situation disclosed by the police and the media, combined with the current legal regulations and judicial precedents, from the perspective of Plustoken's promotion and reward model, it is undoubtedly an illegal pyramid scheme." Lawyer Pang Lipeng of the chain law team believes that due to "virtual currency, regional "Block chain + MLM" is mostly in the form of issuing coins, and there is no effective product in essence.

Therefore, if there is still a situation of "pulling people" and "the number of development personnel as the basis for remuneration and rebates", it is likely to be identified as an illegal pyramid scheme, which is the case for Pulstoken.

Lawyer Pang Lipeng of the chain law team believes that investors need to actively recover to achieve the purpose of stopping losses.

Evidence is the key to successful rights protection. When summarizing and sorting out evidence, we must proceed from the perspective of "police case filing standards", paying special attention to encrypted asset purchase records, bank transfer information, WeChat chat records (voice and text), and even call records. Among them, the encrypted asset purchase record can directly prove how much loss (RMB loss) the victim has incurred.

In the comments of netizens, some users revealed that the scope of the PlusToken project is indeed not small, and most of them are middle-aged and elderly people.

"Most of the deceived are people over the age of 50, and more and more people are participating."

"We have gone deep into the suburbs of Dalian. With our husband and wife's ten years of financial work experience and background in studying abroad, we can't persuade the old mother to quit this (PlusToken) pyramid scheme..."

After negative rumors about the possible collapse of PlusToken came out, a large number of investors sued the project party in WeChat groups, Baidu Tieba and Tencent.

But before the crash, no snowflake is innocent.

PlusToken sells and pours the fantasies of getting rich for believers, and these believers inflate the bubble even bigger and send it to the next prey. Only by continuing to spread the word can the believers avoid becoming the last taker.

Relying on "assistants" like Louise at the beginning of the article, through word of mouth, PlusToken's plate is getting bigger and bigger, and it has also accelerated the arrival of the crash day.

In addition to some investors who don’t know much about funds and virtual currency pyramid schemes, there are also quite a few veterans in the currency circle who entered the market with a fluke mentality in PlusToken. Because of human greed, historical tragedies are repeating themselves.

"At the beginning, I knew it was a capital market, but people always thought that I would be an exception, thinking that I could escape, and ran away when I wanted to double, but ended up losing everything." An investor described himself in Baidu Tieba. mental journey.

"Leeks have no memory. No matter how big the trouble is, it will repeat after a while." A bystander investor satirized the PlusToken incident like this

"A 10%-30% rate of return, do you believe it? In fact, they don't believe it either, but they don't think they will be the last one."