On September 11, 2019, the Swiss financial market supervision authority FINMA published an addendum to the ICO manual, which outlined its position on stablecoin1 under the Swiss supervision legislation. Observing the steady growth of stablecoin projects since 2018, in the context of a request from the Libra Association, FINMA in the initial directions provides information on how the Swiss supervisory will apply the relevant rules for the assessment and supervision of stablecoins.

According to FINMA, the supervisor considers stablecoin in accordance with the law on supervision of an existing approach to blockchain-based tokens: the main focus is on the economic nature and purpose of the token (“substance over form”). When making decisions on specific projects, FINMA will “follow the proven principle of“ same risks, same rules ”, and also take into account the features of each project.

The requirements under the supervision law may vary depending on which assets (e.g. currencies, goods, real estate or securities) are supported by stablecoin and how the legal rights of its owners will be protected (see the Overview in the Appendix to the Guidelines ICO, Appendix 2).

FINMA provided the legal assessment and indicative classification of the Libra project in accordance with Swiss supervisory law based on the available information. It is worth noting that FINMA focused on the fact that the classification may change during the implementation of the project.

Here are a few key points:

- The project falls under the regulation of Swiss financial market infrastructure. The project, as it is currently envisioned, will require a FINMA payment system license.

- The regulatory requirements for payment systems in Switzerland are based on prevailing international standards, in particular, on the Principles for Financial Market Infrastructures (PFMI). These requirements also apply to cyber risk management.

- The Swiss payment system is automatically covered by the Anti-Money Laundering Act. The highest international anti-money laundering standards must be ensured throughout the project’s ecosystem. Such an ecosystem must be protected from the increased risks of money laundering.

- According to the Financial Market Infrastructure Act (FMIA), all additional services that increase the risks of the payment system must comply with the relevant additional requirements. This means that all potential risks of the Swiss payment system, including banking risks, can be eliminated by introducing the relevant requirements in accordance with the principle of “same risks, same rules”. In connection with the release of Libra payment tokens, the services planned by the Libra project will clearly go beyond a purely payment system and, therefore, will be the subject of such additional requirements.

- These additional requirements will relate in particular to the distribution of capital (for credit, market and operational risks), concentration of risk and liquidity, as well as the management of the Libra reserve.

- Additional requirements will be based on generally accepted standards for similar activities in financial markets and should reflect the scope of the project. For example, for similar banking risks, banking regulatory requirements will apply. Thus, the license of the Swiss payment system will allow you to combine the strengths of banking and infrastructure regulation.

A prerequisite for obtaining a license as a payment system would be that the revenues and risks associated with the management of the reserve are fully covered by the Libra Association, and not by the providers of funds - stablecoin holders.

The planned international scope of the project requires an internationally coordinated approach. In particular, the definition of requirements for reserve management and management, as well as for combating money laundering, should be developed in the framework of international coordination.

Matters beyond supervisory law.

A possible licensing procedure under Swiss supervision legislation will only begin after FINMA receives a specific licensing application. In accordance with its practice, FINMA will not provide public information on the status of any existing licensing procedures and will not speculate on when it may be completed.

Other issues raised in the context of the Libra project, such as those related to tax law, competition law or data protection law, are outside the scope of supervisory law and therefore are not within the competence of FINMA.

In the next message, we will analyze in detail the documents posted below.

Source: FINMA.

PlusToken crypto wallet, which proposed storing almost all the world's leading cryptocurrencies and making a profit on their investments, can claim the status of the largest fraudulent project in the history of financial pyramids. Users cannot withdraw the equivalent of $ 3 billion from their online wallets.

PlusToken, an international decentralized crypto project of the multi-currency online wallet PlusToken, was launched in April 2018. The project was positioned by the creators as developing a team from South Korea using Samsung technology. The marketing campaign was launched in Asia (China, Japan, South Korea, Myanmar, Vietnam), a number of European countries (Germany and the UK), as well as in Russia.

In addition to the ability to store almost all the world's leading cryptocurrencies in the wallet - Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum, XRP, EOS, IO, Litecoin, Doge and Dash, users were promised a fairly significant return on investment of their cryptocurrency assets - from 6% to 19% per month.

According to experts from Elementus (USA), a company that creates and promotes fintech solutions based on blockchain technology, over 800 thousand Ethereum cryptocurrency depositors have used PlusToken wallets for the entire existence of the project and stored about 10 million ETH on them.

According to the Special elaborations department of the Technopark of St. Petersburg, the PlusToken pyramid attracted about 200 thousand bitcoins, 789 thousand ETH and 26 million EOSIO. All these funds went to wallets controlled by the PlusToken team.

However, interested media write, these estimates are very preliminary, and the amount collected from investors may be much larger. So, experts say, only the Ethereum address of PlusToken stored more than 781,000 ETH, which, in terms of the exchange rate, amounts to more than $ 234 million.

The capitalization of PlusToken at the top of trading reached $ 17 billion. PlusToken was accused of fraud in March 2019, when Chinese police raided PlusToken's offices in Hunan (PRC). The head of PlusToken's Chinese unit, Chen Bo, as well as five other Chinese citizens related to the cryptocurrency wallet project, have disappeared and are on the wanted list.

Problems with the withdrawal of assets from PlusToken wallets began in late June 2019. The Chinese investors were the first to suffer, as evidenced by the entries in the PlusToken support service, which did not respond to calls, and, starting on June 29, the PlusCoin platform token exchange rate remained at the same level ($ 139,237) without hesitation.

On June 29, according to the Dailypost, six Chinese citizens suspected of participating in an Internet scam were arrested on the island of Vanuatu at the request of the Chinese authorities and deported back to China. It is possible, the publication reports that they are precisely the key figures in the PlusToken team.

To date, it is known that the organizers of PlusToken have already managed to cash out part of the bitcoins through crypto exchanges Huobi Global (Singapore) and Bittrex (USA). In particular, the Singapore cryptocurrency exchange got almost half of the funds raised for wallets - about 4.3 million ETH. The other part was transferred to one of the cryptocurrency wallets.

It was possible to track the funds of defrauded investors thanks to the cryptocurrency transaction analysis service created in the Special elaborations department of the Technopark of St. Petersburg.

According to experts, the obvious signs of the financial pyramid of the PlusToken project were tracked from the very beginning. Among them, the referral system of distribution of funds offered to investors, which is characteristic of financial pyramids and MLM marketing, and unjustifiably high monthly profit (from 6% to 19%.). The PlusToken fraudulent scheme is already being compared with the principles of organizing the BitConnect closed cryptocurrency platform. It entered the market through an ICO at the end of December 2016, and by the end of 2017, its BCC tokens have established themselves as one of the fastest growing cryptocurrencies. She guaranteed her investors a 40% return for a month. According to CoinMarketCap, in a fairly short time, BCC capitalization reached $ 2.6 billion, and the ATH rate was $ 460. But in January 2018, BitConnect unexpectedly for its investors announced the closure of the exchange and the lending program, notifying them that they would continue to provide services as a wallet, but at the same time change the format to a media platform. Immediately after this announcement, investors fell into a panic, and the BCC rate lost 96% of the cost.

It is interesting to note that in Russia until now, users have access to the PlusToken mobile wallet, which can be downloaded from the GooglePlay and AppStore stores. For the storage of their crypto assets in the wallet, Russian investors are still guaranteed a profit of 6% to 19% monthly. True, the “blog” section of PlusToken’s Russian site is currently inactive (or deleted), and all consultations are invited to receive via WhatsApp.

Source: IT News.

On September 3, 2019, in St. Petersburg, specialists and residents of the SafeNet RIC of the St. Petersburg Technopark, together with the Russoft NP and Bee Pitron, held a presentation session for the Indian delegation of Infinity Group. The key focus of the event was the creation of a platform for interaction between participants in the Russian-Indian market.

As part of the meeting, Igor Bederov presented the developments of the Special Development Department for a distinguished guest from India. Mr. Darbari drew particular attention to existing developments in the field of cryptocurrency transaction control and crime prevention. According to him, in India, up to 20% of the population and a significant amount of low-level crime use cryptocurrencies. In addition, the country has not resolved the problem of relapse in previously convicted criminals.

Back in July, in the format of the Second Russian-Indian strategic dialogue, in order to establish a technology transfer, an agreement was signed between RUSSOFT and Infinity Group. As a result, the ICT Center of Excellence project was launched in India, designed to establish cooperation between the two countries in the direction of business development and international assistance to SMEs.

The delegation of the Infinity Group, headed by Mr. Darbari, flew to Russia to meet with potential recipients of investments and to transfer technology from Russia to India under the “Made in India” program.

After a tour of the engineering center, SafeNet residents presented their projects in the areas of Artificial Intelligence, Internet of Things, cyberphysical security, blockchain, virtual and augmented reality. The parties discussed the situation on the international high-tech market and considered options for potential mutually beneficial cooperation. ICT experts emphasized the relevance of Russian solutions to the market of India and other countries and discussed the possibility of implementation.

Source: Engineering center SafeNet.

PlusToken could be the largest scam in the history of financial pyramids. This project has already raised almost $ 3 billion in cryptocurrencies.

At the end of June of this year, six PlusToken project fraud suspects were arrested in China, while another part of the executives is still at large.

According to Elementus researchers, PlusToken collected 10 million ETH from over 800 thousand contributors. In addition to ETH, funds were invested in the project in other digital assets - in bitcoins, XRP and EOS. The total amount of funds raised is impressive - almost $ 3 billion in terms of the exchange rate. Investors live in almost all Asian countries, as well as in Russia, Ukraine, Germany and Canada.

According to preliminary estimates of other researchers, the PlusToken pyramid attracted about 200 thousand bitcoins, 789 thousand ETH and 26 million EOS. All of these funds went to wallets controlled by the PlusToken team. It was possible to track the funds of defrauded investors thanks to the cryptocurrency transaction analysis service created in the Special elaborations department of the Technopark of St. Petersburg. It is known that some of the bitcoins were already cashed by criminals through the Huobi Global and Bittrex crypto exchanges, while the other part settled on one of the crypto wallets.

In particular, PlusToken organizers transferred almost half of the funds raised to the Singapore Huobi crypto exchange - at least 4.3 million ETH of the total ETH.

The PlusToken project was launched in 2018 as an international cryptocurrency project and a decentralized solution (crypto wallet), supported by a team from South Korea. Project promotion was supposed mainly in Asian countries - China, Japan, Myanmar, Vietnam, as well as in Russia and Europe. The project immediately had obvious signs of a financial pyramid - a referral system was offered to investors and a monthly profit of 6% to 19% was promised. According to experts, the PlusToken fraudulent scheme is organized on the principle of the already closed BitConnect platform - with tokens and dividends. The capitalization of BitConnect tokens at the top of trading was a little over $ 121 million, and the capitalization of PlusToken was already $ 17 billion.

Although the PlusToken pyramid has ceased to exist, "a holy place does not exist empty." Similar projects Cloud Token and VDS (Vollar) appear on the market with a market capitalization of $ 1 billion and are already becoming popular, including among Russian-speaking users.

Earlier we reported what a financial pyramid is. Often, pyramids are often understood as MLM - a method of marketing promotion and sales that has been used for many years. Nevertheless, there are different nuances. A synonym for the “evil” pyramid is a scheme named after Ponzi, an Italian-American scammer who created a scam, massively promising investors profit from the contributions of new participants, forming a pyramid until the collapse that inevitably occurs, according to the nature of speculation and any financial bubbles. In our country, Mavrodi distinguished himself with such a fraud with the MMM pyramid. The concept of a financial pyramid is fixed at the legislative level and you can pay for it, including imprisonment for up to six years. So far, the practice of applying this criminal article is not very common.

The Central Bank of Russia gives several main signs of the financial pyramid in its recommendations: paying money to participants from funds contributed by other participants, lack of licenses for this type of activity, promise of high profitability, lack of information about the financial position of the organization, lack of own fixed assets or assets, lack of certain type of activity of the company.

Source: CryptoRussia.ru