China is no stranger to digital currency scams, and the latest one shows that investors in the Asian nation are yet to learn from their mistakes. The Ponzi scheme promising a utopian world and exponential returns started barely three weeks ago, but it has already netted at least $12 million in BTC.
Known as Antimatter Kingdom (AK), the scam is believed to have launched on April 1 according to a Decrypt report. Despite being around for such a short time, security researchers claim its popularity has soared, bringing in between 1,600 BTC and 1,800 BTC. This amounts to upwards of $12 million by the current rates. The AK team boasts of having a much bigger number, claiming to have raised over 180,000 BTC ($1.2 billion).
AK, just like any other scam before it, is promising exponential returns to its investors. The investors send BTC to the firm and it mines AK tokens for them, at least that’s what it promises. It further claims to pay monthly dividends in BTC. Security researchers claim that it has paid out a few investors, a common trick with Ponzi schemes where they pay off a few early investors to lure even more into their scam.
But this is not all. AK goes beyond the money promises, claiming to be working towards a utopian world where commercial civilization is “lasting and orderly.” It claims that its blockchain, known as the Capital Cell Fusion Blockchain, will revolutionize cross-border payments, underpin 5G technology and introduce “a scientific and fair asset creation and redistribution system.”
The amount of money that the project has raised is still unknown. However, blockchain research firm Ergo studied data published by the AK team and concluded that it could be about 1,800 BTC. However, they cautioned that some of the transactions could be from the AK team itself trying to show that the interest was high. Others like Chinese digital currency investor Dovey Wan put it at 5,000 BTC.
the actual BTC spent is 5000ish BTC, that's the amount of BTC ppl used to exchange the ponzi token (hope for a skyrocketing performance) so the scale is just tiny comparing with Plustoken
— Dovey📍HK & ETHTokyo (@DoveyWan) April 18, 2020
AK sends most of the BTC it receives to exchanges such as Binance, Huobi and OKEx for liquidation.
Many in the digital currency industry are drawing comparisons between AK and PlusToken, a mega scam that allegedly made off with close to $3 billion. The scam targeted Chinese investors as well, disguising itself as a high-yield investment.
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