Watch out for "coronary virus": "death game" is questioned

Text: 嚯 嚯

Source: Hive Finance Editor's Note: Original title was "Beware of Corona Virus"

At the beginning of 2020, the outbreak of new crown pneumonia began to occur. As of now, only a few regions such as Antarctica have no cases. The World Health Organization has raised the global spread and impact alert of new crown virus to "very high".

During the global epidemic, some crypto organizations made up their minds about the epidemic situation. A virtual coin named "CoronaCoin" named after the English prefix of the corona virus appeared in the currency circle. The virtual currency, which bets on the deflationary model of a coronavirus epidemic based on the number of sick or dead, has been criticized by Reuters and other overseas media as a "morbid token."

China's financial regulators have also noticed the risks of using blockchain hype during the epidemic. On March 10, when the Beijing Banking Regulatory Bureau warned of the four types of scams, virtual currencies such as Coronaviruscoin were named investment and financial fraud.

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This act of consuming human suffering with financial hype has also been criticized by Reddit users as "immoral." On March 11, CoronaCoin's official website was no longer accessible.

CornaCoin's "death game" questioned

In early 2020, the new crown pneumonia epidemic began to erupt. As the epidemic continued to spread, countries such as South Korea and Italy also became the hardest hit areas, and the number of infections increased day by day. With the globalization of the epidemic, some projects under the banner of blockchain and speculative speculation have begun to operate globally, and the CoronaCoin project has appeared in the currency circle.

"Coronacoin" is a literal translation of the coronavirus, and the token is abbreviated as NCOV. According to the project's official website, this is a token under the ERC-20 standard created by the crypto community development team Sunny Kemp in February this year. The Ethereum browser shows that as of now there are 1,571 Ethereum addresses holding the token.

CoronaCoin's on-chain contract

In addition, the total issued amount of CoronaCoin is 7,804,739,392, which is calculated based on the world's population. It destroys tokens every 48 hours based on the number of people infected or killed. Some people advocate that its price will rise as the number of deaths increases. This looks more like investors betting on the spread of the new crown virus by holding CoronaCoin. Some speculate that as the virus spreads, most of CoronaCoin's supply will be burned, thereby stimulating market hype.

On February 13, this year, NCOV launched an overseas digital asset exchange called “saturn.network”. As of 6pm on March 11th, NCOV quoted $ 0.001. If calculated based on the total number of tokens of 7,804,739,392, the token was issued within one month, and its total market value exceeded $ 7 million. A market for hype is taking shape.

Hive Finance search found that the domestic introduction of NCOV tokens concentrated in March. On social platforms, some people described its deflation model as "the death game of CoronaCoin".

From the perspective of the token model alone, destruction means a reduction in the supply of the token network. However, the model of supporting the value of the token by destruction alone cannot eliminate the outside world's doubts about its "air" attribute. "No matter how much the air currency is reduced, it will be air." "The epidemic will always pass, and we will continue to speculate." ?"

The issuer has stated that 20% of the total NCOV tokens will be reserved for the Red Cross to fund disaster relief efforts, and said that donations are the only application direction of CoronaCoin. This statement cannot be understood by critics. "This consumption epidemic and pathological token logic is obviously a financial scam," said cryptocurrency player Liu Dong. "Frankly, this is very immoral."

Beijing's regulation of "viral coins" is a fraud

Domestic financial regulators have noticed the hype of CoronaCoin. On March 10, the Beijing Banking Regulatory Commission issued a letter reminding consumers to be vigilant and beware of the "four types" of scams that involve financial fraud by epidemic situations, including traps such as low-interest loans, investment and wealth management, and theft of information and donations. Such digital currencies belong to investment and financial fraud based on the concept of blockchain.

Beijing Banking Regulatory Bureau reminded that criminals, based on the characteristics of the public's home epidemic prevention and access to information through the Internet or mobile phones, used the concept of "blockchain" to issue virtual currencies such as Coronaviruscoin and other cryptocurrencies. Masks, protective clothing workshops may be used for research and production of coronavirus vaccines, and promise high returns to cheat victims' money.

Now that the epidemic is spreading around the world, the birth of NCOV once again proves the hype of the blockchain. In fact, throughout the past year, blockchain has always been one of the centers of hype: "blockchain pig raising", "blockchain playing games", "blockchain walking", and various fake scenarios are packed. The nature of financial management, the use of market hot spots, the practice of illegal fundraising or fraud, some have been investigated by the judicial department. The criminals even raised the idea of ​​the central bank's legal digital currency plan.

In March last year, an app called Qubu attracted a large number of users with a gimmick of "run to make money". Six months later, on September 11th, the Changsha Municipal Government released news that Qubu ’s suspected online marketing, illegal fundraising, and financial fraud had been filed for investigation.

In August last year, the People's Bank of China held a working video conference in the second half of 2019, which mentioned that the pace of research and development of fixed digital currency (DC / EP) will be accelerated. DC / EP is the digital currency planned by the People's Bank of China. It is the abbreviation of Digital Currency / Electronic Payment. After that, the market hype about DC / EP gradually began. Some exchanges have even listed digital asset trading pairs whose tokens are simply referred to as DCEP, and others have issued ERC20 tokens named "DCEP" based on Ethereum.

DCEP on the Ethereum Block Browser

In November last year, the central bank specifically rumored on its official website. The People's Bank of China did not issue legal digital currency, nor authorized any asset trading platform to conduct transactions. The People's Bank of China started researching fiat digital currencies in 2014 and is still in the process of research and testing.

In the currency circle, hype about digital currency "cut leek", issue worthless "air coins", endless events such as pyramid schemes, fraud, illegal fundraising, etc. under the banner of blockchain. CoronaCoin's "viral coin" will not be the last one either.

In this regard, some people in the industry have reminded that when the business model of blockchain application is not mature, investors should prevent this technology from generating new "black holes" in capital to prevent blind follow-up investment.

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