OneCoin, a purported cryptocurrency and trading venture based out of Bulgaria, is suspected to be a pyramid scheme with no verifiable evidence to back up any of its business claims. Cointelegraph received a tip from a source inside the company itself.
As if cryptocurrencies didn’t already have a tall wall to climb in reaching widespread acceptance, other factors enter the scene to delay this technological evolution. The association of Bitcoin with terrorism and criminality is one, and the odd Ponzi schemes popping up here and there do nothing to enhance the reputation of cryptocurrencies.
Cointelegraph already covered the OneCoin event in May of this year, with plenty of evidence that should put anyone off of OneCoin, but it seems the company is still alive and running, so it’s worth to keep an eye on the matter. We recently received a tip from the inside of the company.
The source, who worked for some months at OneCoin, prefers to remain anonymous, even though he is no longer employed with them:
“Once I was threatened by them, and I do know Ruja is part of some underground circles in Bulgaria. I'd like to remain anonymous. I really hope to contribute to the truth!”
OneCoin Has No Partners, They Are All OneCoin
One of the practices to make companies appear to be more successful is to show off their partnerships and collaborations with other businesses. When claims are small and the companies are legit, saying some lie about some connection can persist unsuspected; but when a company’s operations become suspect, these chains of association unravel quickly.
The solution: create fake companies that partner up with the main one.
This looks the solution OneCoin came up with: our source says that CoinVegas, AurumCoin, Xcoinx are not independent companies or teams, they are all from the same organization, OneCoin.
We couldn’t verify this, but it is easily demonstrated how incredibly weak and inconsistent all three websites are.
Xcoinx exchange
The Xcoinx website is very easy to expose: it’s ridiculously hollow. The news section is completely empty. Link to the “help center” brings one back to the news page.
The FAQ page begins with statements that look copied straight from the Bitstamp website, (the Bitstamp website was hacked on Jan 4th 2015), in an effort to persuade the reader that the website is not operational due to this attack.
It’s strange that they didn’t post any news related to OneCoin being hacked; but surely if they were hacked, news that they had been forced to stop operations as a result would be a topic of much interest on their news pages.
What remains, is the home page: very simple and clean, maybe too much and with four COMING SOON sections. These are the ‘exchange’ sections, meaning that the website has never exchanged anything.
An examination of their coin statistics reveals that OneCoin’s market cap is 1.951 billions USD, right under Bitcoin! If you can find the same information in any other exchange or ranking, please let us know.
Not even the Terms and Conditions at the bottom right of the page works, and just brings the user back to the top of the same page.
The icing on the cake is the fact that nowhere is there any company address or contact information.
Come on, why don’t you put yourself in the hands of an unknown company whose website was hacked and that has still to activate their exchange platform?
Aurumcoin Cryptocurrency
Allegedly an AltCoin directly linked to gold: 1 gram of gold = 1 AurumCoin.
In the webpage, one of the FAQs explains that:
“AurumCoin was created by a veteran team of economists and technology experts with the intention of leading positive global change. We are obligated to operate legally and therefore we cannot reveal ourselves at this point. The operation will be located in a country that allows this project to operate completely legally.”
No further info is given about this phantomatic team, not a single name. It’s impossible to trace it.
In addition, they write as if the coin is already up and running: “AurumCoin was created”. There’s at least one problem, however; there’s no way to buy it, and there’s none in circulation.
The last of the FAQs is: How do I purchase an AurumCoin?
The answer: See our campaign page to get started right away! The provided link takes the user back to the top of the same page; there is no campaign whatsoever.
The introduction video is well made though, and of course, they need it to be, so to convince the viewer this is something legit.
In the video, it is said that AurumCoin is backed by gold, “stored and insured in professional and high security vaults in Zurich, London, New York, Toronto, Singapore, Hong Kong.”
Why do they need to store gold in so many locations?
Why do we need to back up a cryptocurrency with real property? Not even the dollar has been backed by gold for decades.
Last but not least, with this system we should again trust a central authority.
Welcome to AurumCoin: the only centralized cryptocurrency in the world.
CoinVegas Casino
This website looks like it’s working, after all, they put themselves in the hands of Gaming Plus Limited, based in Malta, as from the Terms page.
However, the About us page gave us a disappointing (?) “Page not available” output.
The FAQ page states that their casino is registered in the Malta Gaming Authority:
“GAMING PLUS LIMITED – Malta, License № LGA/CL4/599/2009 issued by the Malta Gaming Authority”
But there’s no trace of that code or CoinVegas or Gaming Plus Limited at the Malta Gaming Authority.
You can sometimes win at the casino, but I bet you won’t win much at this one.
Financial Supervision Commission Warning
Finally, we have a warning from the FSC about the OneCoin company:
“FSC inform potential investors and consumers in the Internet that activities related to the acquisition, trading and payment OneCoin are not governed by existing EU and national legislation on capital markets. At present OneCoin or other virtual currencies are not recognized and not treated as a financial instrument within the meaning of FIMA and compared them to the requirements of FIMA.
Potential investors and users should be aware that an investment in such cryptocurrencies already exceed 400 different species poses a high risk. In bankruptcy the organizer of this kind of activity, persons not subject to compensation from the Compensation Fund to investors.”
What an honor: OneCoin is finally mentioned by an important institution!
No, I mean, this time it’s for real!
We hope that you liked this article. We recommend you get acquainted with our ratings of the top blockchain companies and cryptocurrencies.