Bitcoin platinum is a scam

Bitcoin platinum (BTP), was set to be launched on December 10th, turns out to be a fraud. BTP was initially marketed as a hard fork of the Bitcoin blockchain. The leading South Korean media outlet, JoongAng, exposed Bitcoin Platinum to be a scam to manipulate Bitcoin prices. It was led by a Korean high school student.

The project was advertised on the social media platform, Twitter, with the so called official handle, '@bitcoinplatinum'. Earlier this month, the creator of bitcoin platinum claimed that the Bitcoin blockchain will experience a hard fork at block 498,577. The hard fork was rumored to be led by a team of miners, developers, investors, and Bitcoin users. However, the Twitter user failed to provide any public list and information regarding supporters, developers, investors or miners, which eventually led to suspicion. Bitcoin platinum also claimed to be "Satoshi’s original vision of bitcoin as decentralized electronic cash." This was the exact same statement as that of bitcoin cash.

After various bitcoin forks, such as Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin Diamond, Bitcoin Platinum also grabbed the attention of a lot of investors. As it was the first major Bitcoin fork directed by a Korean mining pool, it gained a lot of attention from Korean investors ass well. In addition to this, the false fork promised the support of well-known Korean Exchange, Bithumb. This lead to the purchase of bitcoin by many dealers, in hope that they might receive a certain number of bitcoin platinum tokens.

The creator of the pseudo fork later also announced the change of block height from 498,577 to 500,000 due to technical problems at syncing process. The suspicions strengthened when a series of tweets, written in Korean rather than English, were posted. These tweets not only contained irrelevant content but were also very unprofessional in nature. One of the tweets translated to: “Who told you to buy Bitcoin anyways? Short it!”

As the official Bitcoin Platinum was found promoting the shorting of bitcoin, it was concluded that the whole objective of this false fork was to push down the price value of bitcoin. This was later confirmed by JoongAng and other media platforms. The teenage scammer also confessed that the project was formed as a scam and that he only wanted to earn an extra $5,000 through shorting bitcoin.

Countries around the world are working on coming up with plans and policies to tackle situations like this, as they have created a skeptical atmosphere in cryptomarket. The real question still remains: how is Korean Government dealing with this?

Just last month, a scam of $200 million was discovered and five people were arrested. South Korea has formed five ministries and commissions, including the Ministry of Strategies and Finance, to use the regulations to prevent such schemes and create policies to regulate the Korean crypto-market.