At the beginning of the new year, the blessings are still ringing in our ears. People's Daily Online, in conjunction with authoritative content media such as Tencent News, WeChat Security, and Jiaozhen Platform, released a list of projects involving pyramid schemes in 2018.

The reporter noticed that among the 78 projects involving pyramid schemes that were exposed, there were actually 11 projects that used the blockchain to carry out pyramid schemes and issue coins.

The losses caused by pyramid schemes under the guise of blockchain are far greater than ordinary crimes. Huge amounts of wealth are transferred through invisible hands, which is the biggest worm in the blockchain era.

On November 24, 2018, Sebastian Greenwood, the once all-powerful OneCoin main criminal who had been at large for a long time, was successfully captured by the FBI and the Thai Crime Collection Agency, and the main criminal was extradited. Returned to the United States for trial.

Bastian Greenwood is the main culprit of One Coin, a global Ponzi scheme. It is reported that OneCoin will set up a "One Awards" bonus system to reward participating members. These members often participate in projects initiated by this organization, and the so-called projects will raise funds for its global foundation.

But someone soon revealed: "OneCoin used publicity and overseas activities to pretend to be 'high-class', and then used high rates of return and wooing acquaintances to actually form a huge pyramid scheme. System."

In May 2018, domestic regulatory agencies discovered that there were approximately US$7.2 million in funds related to the OneCoin Ponzi scheme.

Virtual currency scams have been around for a long time. Some pyramid schemes are not clever, but they are harmful to people.

From April 2, 2016 to June 22, 2016, Ms. Li, a Zhongshan woman, was introduced to a man named Xu Moubin by her neighbor Ajun (pseudonym). During this period, Xu Moubin and Ajun repeatedly promoted virtual "mark coins" to her, and used dividends and appreciation as temptations. She believed them and eventually purchased about 600,000 yuan of "mark coins" in 9 installments. It was not until February 2017, when the "Mark Coin" website was closed, that she discovered that she had been deceived.

Among the many MLM coin cases, the most “classic” case is the famous “Five Elements Coin” with a value of over 10 billion.

As early as 2013, the State Administration for Industry and Commerce listed Zhang Jian’s “Cloud Digital Trade Alliance” as a pyramid scheme; in October 2014, Zhang Jian was arrested; in December 2016, Zhang Jian was arrested The prison soon launched the Five Elements Coin MLM project. It is reported that the Five Elements Coin project also has Zhang Jian’s profile picture, but Zhang Jian is actually just a junior high school student whose real name is Song Miqiu. In June 2017, Zhang Jian was arrested and returned to China from Indonesia. This absurd farce ended and the legendary Zhang Jian finally fell from the altar.

According to the reporter's understanding, among the 11 MLM coin projects this time, there is also a "real and fake Monkey King" plot. The MLM organization used Stellar Lumens, which ranks sixth in the world's market value, to issue its own "Stellar Lumens". Coin", investors fell into the trap if they were not careful.

Tell me another story about Dogecoin.

In 2017, Dogecoin was listed by CCTV as one of the 350 MLM organizations. However, under the control of desire, it cannot stop the strong rise of Dogecoin.

Dogecoin, a cute emoticon dog head, is called Dogecoin in English and code-named DOGE. It was born in December 2013. Co-founder Jackson Palmer said that he did it as a joke at first, just to mock Bitcoin. Later, with the help of reddit (an American social news site), within two weeks, the Dogecoin project website immediately became popular.

It can be said that the birth of Dogecoin has a lot to do with American Internet culture. On the American Tieba reddit, the doge emoticon is as popular as the three domestic emoticon giants, which means it is equivalent to the domestic tycoon.

The founder said that Dogecoin is not like Bitcoin. People do not participate in it for speculation, but to express emotions of sharing and concern. This also means that at the beginning, the spread of dogecoin relied on sharing between people.

Messari’s OnChainFX data shows that Dogecoin had more average daily active addresses in December 2018 than in December 2017, making Dogecoin the third most daily active address after Bitcoin and Ethereum Cryptocurrency with the most addresses.

Currently, Dogecoin is second only to Bitcoin and Ethereum in terms of daily active addresses, reaching 72,955 in a day. Bitcoin currently has 536,738 valid addresses, Ethereum has 235,004, and Tron has only 21,255. The popularity of Dogecoin is evident.

According to real-time data from the cryptocurrency tracking website Coinmarketcap, the price of Dogecoin today is hovering around $0.0023, and its market value has dropped to $268 million from the highest of $1.7 billion on January 9, 2018. Like most other currencies, it fell by more than 80% in one year.

However, the market value of Dogecoin still ranks 24th in the global market value rankings. Compared with more than 2,000 cryptocurrencies, it still despises all living beings.

To this day, Bitcoin has been brought back to order under the light of the blockchain, and few people have mentioned its past history of being single-handedly promoted by the dark web. But it is undeniable that there are still a large number of MLM coins that use the name of blockchain to conduct pyramid schemes.

While the blockchain carries the technical ideals of geeks, it is also being exploited by those who are interested.

At present, in the early stages of the development of blockchain technology, a strange circle has gradually formed in which idealists and deceivers coexist, and speculators drive out pragmatists. As the cold winter in the currency circle comes, projects collapse one after another, and bad coins drive out good coins.

There is a joke about a blockchain person chatting with an MLM person, and the MLM person was shocked: "What you are doing is illegal."

In fact, MLM people are thinking about one question all the time, that is, how to make it legal. Can I cheat openly and openly after obtaining a direct selling license? It turns out it can't.

After the Tianjin Quanjian incident broke out, on January 1 this year, Quanjian Natural Medicine Technology Development Co., Ltd. was put on file for investigation on suspicion of organizing and leading pyramid schemes and false advertising. Then, as everyone was eagerly waiting, news came out on January 7 that 18 suspects including Quanjian’s boss Shu Yuhui had been detained.

The great transfer of social wealth is often accompanied by technological revolution, which is more attached to material attributes rather than virtual attributes.

It is understandable that capital will use any means to pursue interests. Because this is the property of capital. At the same time, technology has no values. Whoever masters the technology will benefit from it.

In the past, MLM organizations tried to achieve financial freedom by pulling people’s heads without mastering capital or technology. Nowadays, MLM organizations have found a new way to "get rich" and effectively avoid legal supervision, which is to issue MLM coins under the guise of blockchain.

Seeing once is worth hearing a hundred times. 24/7 digital currency transactions throughout the year, unknown currencies that multiply a thousand times a day, and the myth of wealth creation with one coin per villa. While blockchain is on fire, digital currencies are also on fire.

"Blockchain is not a bubble, Bitcoin is." Jack Ma has promoted his views in public on more than one occasion. Unfortunately, in the eyes of most investors, blockchain is digital currency, and digital currency is blockchain.

The reporter learned that some MLM projects that use blockchain to issue coins will move outside the government's strong support for the blockchain industry, but avoid talking about relevant digital currency supervision.

“Many MLM coins only borrow the name of blockchain and do not use any blockchain technology. They are still different from the famous air coins in the currency circle. At least they have actually used the blockchain technology. Blockchain technology." said one investor.

"It's miserable enough if your talent is not enough to support your ambition. What's even worse is that your whole body is full of ambition, but your IQ is squeezed into hell." When the family was fascinated by the "stellar currency" and went bankrupt , a netizen’s message is thought-provoking.

The Asia-European currency fraud involved 4 billion yuan, and more than 70,000 people were defrauded; GCB Glorious Coin involved hundreds of millions of yuan in the case, with hundreds of thousands of registered members; EGD Network Gold involved 10.9 billion yuan in the case, with many registered members Reaching 500,000 people; Wanfu Coin involved a case amount of 2 billion yuan, with 130,000 registered members; Darkcoin involved a case amount of 1.5 billion yuan, with more than 30,000 registered members; OneCoin involved a case amount of 600 million yuan, with 1.8 million registered members; Lai The amount involved in the Huibi case is 500 million yuan, with 200,000 registered members...

According to the reporter’s understanding, the number of MLM coins currently on the market is far more than the number listed this time.

Comparing the overall MLM cases in my country, the China Judgment Document Network shows that from 2002 to 2018, the total number of MLM cases in my country was 14,658, including 1,869 in 2014, 1,417 in 2015, and 3,085 in 2016 Since then, there have been 3,313 cases in 2017 and 3,612 cases in 2018. The overall growth trend is much smaller than that of virtual currency pyramid schemes.

Based on the 166 cases of virtual currency pyramid schemes in 2018, in just a few years, virtual currency pyramid schemes have accounted for 5% (166/3612) of my country’s overall pyramid schemes. This does not include the numerous ICO (Initial Coin Offering) MLM projects that are registered overseas and cannot be dismissed domestically for the time being.

The essence of MLM coins is actually not much different from traditional MLM. The methods of attracting people, developing offline, and issuing physical objects as collateral are already bad. But in the face of such familiar routines, investors Still unable to resist.

Under the circumstances of poverty and economic weakness, greed and hunger that have nowhere to go have become the biggest breeding ground for MLM coins. What about MLM coins? In front of desire, there is no need for IQ.

In this market, faced with endless temptations, most people are unable to distinguish whether this is an investment with huge profits or a scam that loses all their money. Under the temptation of greed, MLM has jumped on the blockchain train.

But please remember: pyramid schemes have been like tigers and wolves since ancient times, and a dream will eventually turn into a nightmare.