A scam worth hundreds of millions of dollars: Why did HEX cause public outrage?

Written in front: The author of this article has revealed the recent scam HEX that has caused public outrage in the cryptocurrency community. Several well-known figures in the cryptocurrency community have condemned the project. The project uses the two mechanisms of reward and punishment to continuously transfer funds to the address held by founder Richard Heart, which is essentially to accumulate wealth for him. The author detailed the specific measures taken by Richard Heart in the article, hoping to attract the attention of investors.

The following is the full content of the article:

I've seen several articles calling HEX a Ponzi scheme or a pyramid scheme, but neither is. It has many features, but it is unique because it has a lot of moving parts and is very complicated to hide how immoral this project is. Although its creator, Richard Heart, promised that the token could "realize a substantial increase in value and outperform all projects in history", he also said that "the return can be more than 10,000 times in two and a half years." After in-depth analysis, the existence of HEX has only one purpose: to make Richard Heart profit at the expense of the interests of all participants. Even in the current ethically controversial project environment, HEX is the most shocking, though perhaps the smartest. After the first year, not only will Richard control nearly half of the HEX, but this is the first token I've seen that writes its founder's permanent "self-value-added" into the protocol.

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HEX is currently in its year-long initial start-up phase, after which almost all HEX will be separated. During this period, participants can get HEX in two ways: they can buy HEX by sending their Ethereum to a place called "Adoption Amplifier", which can implement a recurring daily auction, or they can There are Bitcoins to get HEX for free-each Bitcoin corresponds to 10,000 HEX.

When it comes to Adoption Amplifier, Richard will be careful not to mention that you are buying HEX on Ethereum. According to him, you are "donating" your Ethereum and then converting it to HEX. In simple terms, the reality is that your Ethereum hasn't performed any meaningful "conversions". It still exists, but it no longer belongs to you, it belongs to Richard. Instead, you own some of the coins that Richard created, and his promise that it will make you very rich. Within the first 24 hours of launch, more than $ 3 million in Ethereum has been sent to Adoption Amplifier. Given that the auction is renewed daily for the first 352 days, Richard is likely to make more than $ 100 million on Ethereum alone.

In addition to the Ethereum received through Adoption Amplifier, Richard has also added a design to HEX that allows him to obtain nearly half of the token ownership through the so-called "The Origin Address". However, if you open the HEX website, you will not find any relevant information, neither the homepage nor the FAQ page. I suggest you do a keyword search to test it yourself. What you will see is a dazzling list of bonuses filled with the benefits that can be obtained as an early Staker in HEX, and a lot of promises for future returns, but this origin address is not mentioned, its impact is not stated, or Richard holds The fact that there is this address.

The origin of the address can only be found by visiting hex.win (Richard's official HEX website), click on the tab called "Tech Specs", and then under the "Code" subheading, click "How does HEX work?" "Advanced analysis of how HEX works." You will then open a 22-page Google file titled "HEX Contract in Layman's Terms." Even if you did all of this, you still need to read the bottom of page 14 of the file to find this:

(In short, the origin address will regularly receive one-half of the system penalty and various rewards)

Even if you are a potential HEX investor, when you see this content, do you feel reasonable? Even the name "origin address" sounds too mild and tedious. Maybe if it was called "Richard gave himself almost half the HEX" address, it would get more attention.

Although it is impossible to know how much HEX Richard will control after the initial startup phase, or even the total amount of HEX, all the reward payments received by the origin address should account for about 45% of the HEX supply. If more Bitcoin holders get HEX, the origin address will get more "Speed ​​Claim" and "Recommended" bonuses on the front end and more "Critical Mass / Virality" bonuses at the end of the issuance phase . If there are not too many Bitcoin holders trying to obtain HEX, the origin address will receive more "we are all Satoshi Nakamoto" bonuses, and these bonuses will distribute all unclaimed HEX to staker.

If this sounds confusing and puzzling, that's right, that's the purpose of designing this mechanism. These complexities and game theory not only appeal to people, but also obscure Richard's goal of accumulating money. In this sense, the name HEX couldn't be more appropriate (the word HEX originally meant to be magic). It works like a well-designed magic: countless ingenious bonuses, high yields, and addictive game theory to mislead users. You eventually found where Richard wanted you to watch, but missed reading page 14 of the hidden Google Doc, which revealed that HEX is a manipulated game.

When Richard was asked for information about the origin address, he tried to emphasize that he was not the owner and did not know who would own it. It sounds like you might be the owner of this address when you wake up tomorrow. This is a lie. Richard designed HEX. The entity that received Ethereum from the Adoption Amplifier and the HEX that originated from the address is either himself or an entity specified by him, and he can control it. If you still believe that Richard created HEX in some way, just to give the origin address to others, this article may not help you.

It is worth mentioning that Richard also added a measure, which is very ironic. He set 45% of the HEX supply as a founder tax (that is, a founder reward). For years, he has publicly criticized projects like ZCash, which use a much more transparent founder tax to fund development, which he considers to be an unqualified investment factor.

Even more shocking is that Richard sees the existence of the Bitcoin whale as a threat:

He used this to publicize that HEX can solve this problem, and is even more equal, that is, remove the whale from bitcoin and redistribute their coins to participants with smaller holdings:

In reality, however, Richard built an ocean where he was the only whale, much larger than any other whale in any project. The only HEX beluga that cannot be killed.

Richard moved your cheese

So far, we have determined that Richard will likely get more than $ 100 million in Ethereum and control 45% of HEX after the first year. Bitcoin's high initial inflation rate quickly diluted the share of Satoshi Nakamoto and other early adopters. In contrast, HEX will only have an annual inflation rate of up to 3.69%. Once the initial start-up phase is over, HEX will never be dilution. In fact, as the "Bigger Pays Better" bonus pays an additional 10% of the holding amount to the larger holder, his HEX share will only increase over time.

However, there is an additional benefit to the origin address, which may be more important than Richard assigning himself 45% of HEX. As the holder of the origin address, Richard can get half of the HEX penalty paid for the penalty.

All bonuses and high interest rate settings are bait to attract you to participate in HEX and pledge tokens, but there are also two punishment mechanisms. First of all, if you do n’t have time to stop stake, then you have to pay half of the gain you made during the stake as a penalty (this can even erode your capital). The second is if your HEX stays in an unstake state-you forgot, or you ca n’t use HEX while traveling, or you have a car accident, etc.-another punishment mechanism will be turned on and your HEX will gradually be drained.

If you only looked at the HEX website, you might think that all the penalties belonged to Staker, but in fact, half of the HEX went to Richard's origin address, and the other half was divided by the other Staker. But remember: Richard not only owns the origin address, but also includes at least 45% of HEX (after the first year). Suppose someone ended the take ahead of time and paid a fine of 1 million HEX. Richard eventually got 775,000, leaving only 225,000 points to thousands of other stakers.

HEX bonuses expire after the initial start-up phase, but the penalty is always part of the HEX smart contract and will never expire, allowing Richard to continuously accumulate wealth, suck all the value from you, and accumulate them to Richard himself.

If Richard pledges all the coins, there seems to be no upper limit on the HEX he can control during the first few years of this project. Even more frightening, however, is what would happen if Richard wanted to cash out?

He can regularly sell one billion HEX on the market every day, or he can "Emergency Unstake" his coin at any time. Since he can get half the fine, he can sell tokens by stopping stake while paying only half the fine. Not only that, if someone sees that the price has dropped due to Richard's sell-off, they may also stop pledged to stop the loss, so half of the fines they pay will go to Richard's origin address, and let this sell-off token cause the price to collapse Purse bulging.

Richard can even abandon all of his HEX and abandon this project, and over time, a steady stream of fines will still flow to his origin address in the form of HEX: a zombie whale died and was born again.

Even if you believe in Richard and don't think he will do these things, it illustrates Richard's power and destroys the already broken game theory. By participating in HEX, you not only make Richard Heart richer and richer, you also leave him at his disposal. He created a game and gave himself most of the chips to make the rules always good for him. This is a game you can't win. Even if it seems you can do it, Richard tells you that persistence is victory. But in fact you can't. If you buy HEX, you will lose money financially. If you get HEX for free with Bitcoin, you lose integrity because you are recognizing a liar.

This is a new form of scam

HEX's influence is so significant because it is not strictly a scam of any kind. It's not exactly a pyramid, Ponzi scheme or MLM-of course it includes all the relevant features. This is a whole new thing, penetrating the internal cognitive firewall that most people use to judge whether they have been cheated.

Richard knows exactly what HEX is, especially the way he sells it, so he would say: "I know my token may look like a duck and it sounds like a duck, but I assure you it's not a duck. Of course, I use The methods are common in scams. I use the methods commonly used by scammers to accumulate wealth for myself. I have written the content of self-wealth appreciation into the agreement, but I assure you that this is a legitimate project. A respected member of the cryptocurrency community. "

HEX is such an amazing scam that sometimes seems to be surreal performance art, or the most profitable fishing act in the world. I believe that one day this will be a humorous story we tell our children about the crazy days of the cryptocurrency world ("A long time ago, a guy on Twitter wore a magician's hat and created a type called HEX Cryptocurrency, he secretly gave himself half … ").

If not for the tragedy that so many people dumped, HEX could even be described as funny.

Scam to end the scam

Unfortunately, no matter how widespread this article is, it's almost impossible for HEX users to see it.

Two days after HEX was released, Richard said in a particularly taunting tweet:

"There are only three options to stop scams. 1. Enforcement (understaffed and passive, basically impossible to get back money); 2. Warn people (there is no way to reach everyone and they will not listen at all); Good salesmanship to fight for an honest project and leave the scam with no resources available (do it!). "

I want to urge everyone-especially those who are well known in cryptocurrency-to come forward.

From this point, I want a detailed specification that tells us how to treat scams and how to treat those who are involved in scams. HEX as a Schelling Point may eventually become a value in this industry-everyone can agree that a certain project is a scam, unite together, and limit its impact.

We will continue to update Blocking; if you have any questions or suggestions, please contact us!