"Missing Cryptocurrency Queen" Technology companies without technology: Onecoin Ponzi scheme

Author: Jamie. Jamie Bartlett
Translator: Zheng Huansheng Publishing House: Chunk Culture

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This is a real story that has not been adapted. It records a "novel" involving a Ponzi scheme involving 4 billion US dollars (5 times the " bad blood " fraud in Silicon Valley). The protagonist of the story is the "pseudo-cryptocurrency" Onecoin (One Coin) and its founder Ru Ya. Dr. Ruja Ignatova.

Before getting into the topic, I would like to make a bad comment on the copywriting of the publishing house. It actually puts the "father of Bitcoin" Satoshi Nakamoto and a lot of scammers (the bloody case, the Baring case, the ancestor of the Ponzi storm) in the same context Personally, I think it is inappropriate to compare them with each other.

龐式騙局是指一種表面上提供高收益的投資計劃，但事實上運作方式卻是靠新投入資金充當目前投資者的甜頭，是一種典型的「後金補前金」投資騙局。比特幣是一種去中心化的數位資產，其本身不存在任何收益發放行為、不存在各種保證承諾——事實上，比特幣從來就不是一項投資計畫；比特幣是一套電子貨幣系統，只是因為具備類似黃金的資產屬性，所以在市場上存在漲跌與價差。坊間或有心人士舉著比特幣、加密貨幣、虛擬貨幣投資計畫的旗幟建立新的龐式騙局，但那與比特幣本身毫無關聯，因為同樣的情況也時常發生在外匯、貴金屬等金融商品。

■ Technology companies without technology

Ru Ya, the protagonist of " The Missing Queen of Cryptocurrency ", has an impeccable academic experience (Ph.D. from Oxford University, consultant at McKinsey, a giant consulting company), can speak fluently in five languages, confident stage charm and fashionable and beautiful appearance , known as the "Queen of Cryptocurrency" by everyone.

OneCoin is a "pseudo-cryptocurrency" project launched by Ruya and co-founder Sebastian Greenwood in July 2014. They use a multi-level marketing system (direct sales system) to sell different levels of "educational courses". These boxed courses are "free" with varying amounts of OneCoins (depending on the level of the gift package).

The reason why Onecoin is fake is because the mining (accounting) process is fake, and the cryptocurrency price is also fake. The tokens purchased by users are only behind the SQL database (which can be understood as an advanced version of Excel ) in a stroke of data. In other words, Onecoin lacks the ontology of cryptocurrency - a credible blockchain ledger technology - like a car without an engine.

Onecoin is a technology company without technology.

Although there is a function called "blockchain live broadcast" on the Onecoin website, it is just a "script" that has been set in advance, and it is just a ready-made machine running various fake transaction data ; at the beginning of 2017, Bitcoin expert Bjorn (Bjorn) spent several weeks back and forth, conducting about 200 actual measurements in the "front desk" (OneCoin payment interface), and then observing the chain records in the "background" to see if they match The reconciliation data, the answer is no, not once.

■ riding a tiger

According to an email (written by Ruya to Sebastian in August 2015), Onecoin may have some kind of blockchain somewhere in the early days, trying to bridge the "pseudo" cryptocurrency (SQL database ) and the "real" blockchain; Ruya could have paused its activities and waited for the blockchain to catch up with those current "oversold" (by: Onecoin is scheduled to be officially launched in January 2015 , but pre-sales started as early as September 2014), but she has to wait for a year to follow the speed of block packaging and production of coins.

How can the momentum of direct sales that has finally been ignited cool down for a year? It may also be that Ru Ya can't bear face because of face, or she thinks highly of herself and thinks that she will be able to find a way to mend the hole in the future.

OneCoin had no choice but to continue riding a tiger.

What's more, OneCoin has grown unexpectedly rapidly. After 18 months of sales, it encountered a situation where there were no coins to sell. The solution proposed by Ruya was to modify the tokens (in the name of data relocation) Total rules . Launched the "new chain" in October 2016, and increased the total amount of OneCoin to 120 billion, which is nearly 60 times the original 2.1 billion - and the price of Vikabi will remain completely unchanged (after all, The numbers in those databases are all custom), and the whole game rules are turned for her .

Whether it is the law of supply and demand in economics, or the trust foundation of "code is law" in the blockchain world, it has been violated and offended.

■ Success is blockchain, failure is blockchain

" The Missing Queen of Cryptocurrency " made a note for OneCoin:

The irony of Onecoin is that the technological revolution Ruja has been selling to the world for three years (the blockchain)—a fixed money supply controlled by computer code—turns out to be the reason she can’t get out.

One of the characteristics of the blockchain is that it cannot be tampered with (immutable). As a revolutionary system, the immutable chronological record (time stamp) was supposed to be a tool that can liberate people, but in the end it became immobilized. shackles. It means that as early as 2015 when Onecoin staged the drama of "digging out the creation block", a pit that could never be filled was buried, and it would eventually collapse. It's all just a matter of time.

OneCoin made a lot of money with the (non-existent) blockchain technology, but it also became known because of the nature of the blockchain.

So far, Ru Ya, who is listed among the top ten most wanted criminals by the FBI, has not been arrested. The latest news comes from the news of his " London real estate " in January 2023. The story of Onecoin is not over yet.

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