Under the national ban, a virtual currency retreat operation began immediately. On May 25th, Inner Mongolia, one of the most concentrated areas of virtual currency mining, issued "Eight Measures for Resolutely Punishing Virtual Currency Mining (Draft for Comment)", prohibiting virtual currency mining.
Unsold virtual currency
This is not the first time that the state has made such great efforts to supervise virtual currency. In 20 13, the People's Bank of China and other five ministries and commissions issued the Notice on Preventing Bitcoin Risks, prohibiting financial institutions and payment institutions from conducting bitcoin-related businesses. In 20 17, seven ministries and commissions, including the People's Bank of China, issued the Announcement on Preventing the Financing of Token Issuance, guiding all localities to investigate and clean up the virtual currency trading and token issuance financing platforms suspected of illegally issuing securities and raising funds. However, since then, some platforms, such as Huobi and Ou Yi, have moved overseas and still provide services for domestic residents.
In the first half of this year, with the skyrocketing market value of virtual currency, virtual currency became the hardest hit area for cheating money. Many people, under the temptation of high income, participated in the trading speculation organized by overseas platforms and fell into the trap carefully laid by others.
Ms. Li: Look, this is the picture I cut at that time. When I sold it, it showed that the transaction failed.
The virtual currency displayed by Ms. Li is called TRTC. At the beginning of this year, this virtual currency was worthless and its price soared. Ms. Li, who is familiar with virtual currency investment transactions, saw this opportunity and bought this TRTC coin at a price of about 6,000 yuan on overseas platforms.
Ms. Li: We all call this kind of coin a hundredfold coin. You can think about how good the market was at the beginning and think it can go up a hundred times.
Ms. Li: There is no doubt that because the main concept of this currency is liquidity mining, it is a new investment outlet for the currency circle now. Everyone is speculating, but I never thought that I couldn't sell it in the end.
This player told me that this TRTC coin can only be purchased with another digital encryption currency "Ethereum". In the video, the player is accessing the virtual currency trading platform through the application on the mobile phone, buying Ethereum, and then TRTC coins. However, when trying to sell, the system appeared a reminder page of transaction failure.
Why can't I sell "one hundred coins"?
What's wrong with this virtual currency? Is it a temporary failure of the trading system or a man-made trap?
Li Xuan, a security engineer of a technology company in the blockchain: The pool has been completely hollowed out, and the value has gone to zero, which is equivalent to taking away all the Ethereum in the trading pool, and there are almost 59 Ethereum with a value of 654.38+10,000 US dollars.
Li Xuan: At that time, quite a few people should have participated in the purchase, but if we sold it, we could actually only see the information with the ending number of 799.
Why is it that only users whose trading address ends with 799 can successfully sell money, but no one like Ms. Li Can can successfully sell it? Who is this 799? With questions, we analyzed the source code of TRTC coins. After careful research and screening, we found such a small line of code in the long code.
Li Xuan: In the transfer function, there is actually one condition. As you can see in the bottom line, the sender is equal to the owner, which means that only the owner (publisher) can sell, while other users can only buy but not sell. Normal code does not have this restriction.
The so-called owner is the creator of this virtual currency. This well-designed place makes him the only one who has the right to sell. It is not difficult to see that this creator is the mysterious user of the tail number 799. According to the transaction records, it was this person who finally transferred all the Ethereum in the fund pool.
Li Xuan: This operation cheated others of valuable coins. What ordinary users don't understand may soon be attracted.
How to concoct "Hundred Times Coins"?
Seeing this, you must understand that this is an out-and-out scam under the new technology, taking advantage of the psychology that investors do not understand blockchain technology but blindly follow the trend. So how is the fraudulent virtual currency issued online? Why can you create the illusion of skyrocketing and attract people?
Feng Changsheng, blockchain technical security engineer: It is expected that this coin can be issued within three minutes.
Feng Changsheng: First, we randomly copy a tokencode from the main network, and then put it on the IDE (programming software) on the Internet. Just enter the name of the token and we will call it ABCD. Then just click "deploy", put it on the stock exchange, and set the initial price of 10 ABCD for 1 ethereum. Now that it has been successful, we ordinary users can find this token directly on the transaction page.
Just a few simple steps, copy a code, change a name, set a price, and a virtual coin will be successfully traded on the online trading platform. What is even more unexpected, however, is that this worthless virtual currency can not only be introduced at will, but also manipulate the price at will.
Feng Changsheng: We issue tokens. Basically all the tokens are in our hands, so we can use the huge tokens in our hands to manipulate the market price, which is equivalent to pushing up the price with our left hand.
In this technician's demonstration, when he bought this ABCD virtual currency himself, the K-line chart of the trading platform immediately rose sharply. On the contrary, when I sell it myself, the K-line chart immediately drops.
Operation on the left and K-line feedback on the right.
Feng Changsheng: Under the propaganda and brainwashing of a project, ordinary users will blindly follow the trend to buy this token as soon as they see the price rise. When a large number of users flock to buy this token, the project party will use the token in his hand to smash the plate. There is no threshold for issuing this currency. On the decentralized trading platform, any user can trade and issue tokens here without verifying whether there is a problem with the code.
Security incidents of virtual currency will increase by 240% in 2020.
According to the statistics of the National Computer Network Emergency Technology Processing Coordination Center, with the active trading volume of virtual currency in the first half of the year, various potential risks are also emerging one after another.
Wu Zhen, National Computer Network Emergency Technology Disposal Coordination Center: Many criminals use the virtual digital currency to launder money or transfer illegal funds, which may disrupt the economic order of the country. There are even some lawless elements who swindle under the banner of blockchain. At the same time, now we have collected more than 400 vulnerabilities. If there are loopholes, they will be used by criminals to steal related digital assets.
According to the report released by the National Blockchain Vulnerability Database, according to incomplete statistics, the number of security incidents in the blockchain field reached 555 in 2020, an increase of nearly 240% compared with the security incidents in 20 19; It mainly includes 204 fraud/phishing incidents, virus blackmail incidents 143 and trading platform security incidents 3 1. The economic losses caused were as high as $654.38+0.79 billion, an increase of 654.38+0.30% compared with 2065.438+09.
Since the COVID-19 epidemic, all kinds of illegal financial activities on overseas virtual currency trading platforms have become more active. In addition to the token issuance financing that Ms. Li encountered suspected of illegally issuing securities, there is also a fiery virtual currency forward contract transaction, and its leverage ratio is as high as dozens to hundreds of times. In essence, it is just a game of "betting long and betting short". This illegal futures activity has brought huge property losses to the participants, and there are often news reports that speculators have exploded their positions, but the virtual currency trading platform has made a lot of money behind it.
Don't let hype interfere with the healthy development of blockchain.
Speculation is not equal to financial management on the tall side, but high-risk gambling, and some even violate the law.
For ordinary investors, facing the overseas trading platforms and bookmakers with information, capital and chips, they have huge information advantages, and ultimately they can't escape the fate of "cutting leeks", which requires more cold thinking. For practitioners of blockchain, blockchain technology innovation does not mean speculating virtual currency. How to make blockchain technology break away from virtual reality, let "blockchain+"take root in various application scenarios, and inject new kinetic energy into China's economic transformation and upgrading and realize high-quality development, which is the proper meaning of technological innovation.