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New Cryptojacking Virus “Norman” Targets Monero (XMR) Mining

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The latest report by cyber-security firm, Varonis finds that a new cryptojacking virus, Norman is targeting Monero cryptocurrency. The finding made public on August 14, hinting that it will mostly affect a mid-size company.

New Monero Mining Malware Detected

Monero is famously named as the “privacy-centric” cryptocurrency – however, the research on August 14 reveals that the Norman aims to mine CPU_centric coins like XMR/Monero and evade detection.

Norman is the new cryptojacking virus that will supposedly use the computing power of the user’s computers to mine cryptocurrencies. The case of Norman particularly highlights Monero (XMR) as it is based on XMRig and report described it as the “high-performance mining algorithm for Monero cryptocurrency”.

The research firm outlines that;

“Almost every server and workstation was infected with malware. Most were generic variants of crypto miners. Some were password dumping tools, some were hidden PHP shells, and some had been present for several years,”

It states that the malware closes crypto mining as soon as the user opens up the task Manager whereas it will re-launch the mining process again once the Task Manager closes. The Research noted;

“Norman employs evasion techniques to hide from analysis and avoid discovery,”

It’s worth mentioning that Monero is much likely a favorite cryptocurrency for hackers and attackers as crypto space witnessed several malware incidents for XMR earlier.

However, the security firm suspects that it has french variables in the code and accordingly notes this malware is likely derived from a country of French speakers. According to the researchers at Varonis, Norman is based on the PHP programming language. It went on adding;

“The malware may have originated from France or another French-speaking country: the SFX file had comments in French, which indicate that the author used a French version of WinRAR to create the file,”

Up until August 14, Norman attack almost every workstation and server at one “mid-size company.” Researcher indicates that the strain of Norman executes Monero mining in three steps, execution, injection and then crypto mining.

Disclaimer: The presented information is subjected to market condition and may include the very own opinion of the author. Please do your ‘very own’ market research before making any investment in cryptocurrencies. Neither the writer nor the publication (TronWeekly.com) holds any responsibility for your financial loss.

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Crypto scammers pretend as FCA in Emails to capture investors attention

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The latest report states that crypto scammers are misleading investors by sending emails, impersonating UK’s FCA (Financial Conduct Authority). These emails are intending to amass investor’s interest by promising “guaranteed chance to earn” on crypto-related investment.

Scammers Guaranteeing Huge Earning Using FCA’s name

As scammers are quite smarter, these impersonated emails were featuring the FCA’s branding and Prudential Regulation Authority’s logo with a subject line, entitling “Guaranteed chance to earn.”

The emails quickly want investors to believe in the brighter future of Bitcoin in terms of value and specifically mentioned the price could hit over $20k by 2020. With that, recipients were encouraged to click on a “Click here” button.

“Bitcoin is still a long way off its peak price of $20,000, which it reached in 2017, but some cryptocurrency experts believe it could hit an even higher value by 2020.”

While FCA had confirmed their specific team is scrutinizing the matter, they have advised having due diligence ahead of clicking such buttons or act upon such emails. FCA always quickly cautioned investors on such matters and this time too, it warned that;

“The correspondence is likely to be linked to organized fraud and we strongly advise you not to respond to the criminals in any way,”

Nevertheless, this caught the attention of few more users when Dominic Thomas, founder of Solomon’s Independent Financial Advisers, took to Twitter and opened up about such scam emails. He said that he received the email five times over the weekend and stated that

“Email reveals the extent of the problem with cheap and easy new media ‘advertising'”.

Following other such queries on scam email, FCA ensured that they would never contact members of the public for money or any other bank details. It further warned recipients and the general public that this might be associated with the fraud and requested not to respond to the criminals in any way. It read that;

“Look for signs that the email, letter or phone call may not be from us, such as it listing a mobile or overseas contact phone number, an email address from a Hotmail or Gmail account, or a foreign PO Box number. “Scam emails or letters often contain spelling mistakes and poor grammar.”, It continued.

Disclaimer: The presented information is subjected to market condition and may include the very own opinion of the author. Please do your ‘very own’ market research before making any investment in cryptocurrencies. Neither the writer nor the publication (TronWeekly.com) holds any responsibility for your financial loss.

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Money from the sky: 25-year-old Crypto promoter sentenced jail

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Isn’t it exciting when we hear/read someone is throwing money from the sky? But a 25-year-old boy given suspended jail sentence due to his public stunt of throwing HK $100 bills from the roof of a building in Hong Kong’s most impoverished district.

Crypto-Promoter Given Suspended Jail Sentence

Wong Ching-Kit is also known as “Coin Young Master” – he did this public stunt back in December 2018, but the latest news states that Won Ching-Kit has suspended for two years for committing a nuisance in a public place.

However, this stunt was an act to promote one of his crypto businesses – in fact, reports state that the boy has been accused of fraud by few enthusiasts who states that, he sold so-called “special crypt mining machines” which in reality are just worthless.

This report was shared by famous media South China Morning Post (SCMP) on July 19, citing;

Wong Ching-kit, 25, better known as “Coin Young Master”, admitted to assisting his company’s promotion of a new cryptocurrency in Sham Shui Po on a busy Saturday afternoon last December, and pleaded guilty to one count of nuisances committed in a public place.

According to the videos that surfaced on social media earlier, it was revealed that crowds on the street immediately flocked to gather the notes/HK bills and while others gathered to capture the moment of “rain money.”

Nevertheless, as per the reports, it was at-least HK$6000 that seen raining from the top of a building in Kowloon district. During that time, there were two videos found on wong’s social media, one showing “money from the sky,” and another video where Wong appeared and asked people to support his business but quietly denied he was anywhere involved in the “rain-money” incident. Moreover, the video caption had also claimed that;

“In the future, there will be money falling from the skies across different parts of Hong Kong.”

Although Wong’s lawyer requested fines rather than a jail sentence, but according to the Magistrate Leung Siu-Ling, penalties are unsuitable; she said;

His promotional stunt was not ideal as the situation could easily have turned ugly when there were up to 300 people on site.

Disclaimer: The presented information is subjected to market condition and may include the very own opinion of the author. Please do your ‘very own’ market research before making any investment in cryptocurrencies. Neither the writer nor the publication (TronWeekly.com) holds any responsibility for your financial loss.

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The new crypto rally is in for sure, so the scammers are coming

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The cryptocurrency market is going up again. We had to wait for more than a year and a half to see it show any signs of recovery. During that time, more than 85% of the total capitalization was lost, and many cryptocurrency projects found themselves facing severe problems, which is why we’re all only too happy to see the market back in the green zone.

That being said, the market’s rise prompts many things to happen, and not all of them are good. The most obvious consequence of the market’s growth is increased interest from everybody inside and out of the crypto verse. More people want to join in and get a piece of the action. And that means that more people too will find ways to create scams and exploit the new wave of enthusiasm.

Maybe it’s already happening. Andreas M. Antonopoulos thinks it is, at least. Mr. Antonopoulos is a well-regarded cryptocurrency markets expert, and he says that he’s already getting is inbox flooded with crypto-related scams.

The gangs are back

The expert says that he’s getting “10-15 requests a day” from alleged crypto marketers.

Scammers were not very active during the 2018 Crypto Winter. The last significant scam happened from August to December 2017, just before the market crashed. There were plenty of hacks during that time, but no scams worth mentioning. But the winter is over, and now they’re coming back in legions. Why? Because the new rally is in and now it’s worth their time to try and cheat their potential victims out of their digital wealth.

And whatever else you can say about the scammers, they’re a bunch of very creative people. So the chances are that they won’t just try to repeat the old classics but that they will also come up with new schemes and tactics that will enable them to steal crypto coins from the unsuspecting.

In Mr. Antonopoulos words, FOMO (fear of missing out) is hitting once again because the new rally is here. So, whatever else you do during the new bullish market, your first priority should be to be careful and keep your money, let it be digital or otherwise, safe.

Promises of profits are not your friend. Efforts that “recuirt” members or want “referrals” are pyramid schemes most of the time. Which means that it’s impossible for anybody to make any money from them unless they’re the founders. But those are not the worst.

Mr. Antonopolos writes that “ICOs/IEOs are 99.99% pump-and-dump.” They’re not new at all. They were ever present during late 2017 when we saw the previous bullish market. These are the ones that you need to be more careful about and avoid at all costs.

So now you know. The new Crypto Summer is here, but so are the parasites and if you’re not careful you could lose a great deal of time, effort and money at their hands. Keep well-informed and keep in mind that making a buck always take an initiative. If something looks too good to be true, the chances are that it is really too good to be true. Be especially careful about your mobile phone and apps.

The scams are coming. Stay informed and stay safe. It’s always better to stay alert than feeling sorry later.

Disclaimer: The presented information is subjected to market condition and may include the very own opinion of the author. Please do your ‘very own’ market research before making any investment in cryptocurrencies. Neither the writer nor the publication (TronWeekly.com) holds any responsibility for your financial loss.

Never miss our daily cryptocurrency news, price analysis, tips, and stories. Join us on Telegram | Twitter or subscribe to our weekly Newsletter.

Beware of free crypto offers, there is no such thing as free cryptocurrency

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You’re probably familiar with an old saying that goes, “there’s no such thing as a free lunch.” Well, you should update it as “there’s no such thing as free cryptocurrency” and act accordingly because we’re seeing several websites offering software downloads that supposedly deliver free digital assets to their users. What they really get instead is malware.

Two levels

The scam works on two levels.

In the first level, a website will offer free Ethereum tokens (ETH) to users as rewards for referrals of other new navigators that come to the websites in question and adopt the scam as well. You’re supposed to get three ETH for every 1.000 visitors. That’s almost USD 800,00 in the current market, which is an exceedingly high reward as this kind of things go. It’s just a lure, of course, that’s how unsuspecting users are persuaded to bring more people about.

But the real deal (which in this case means the real problem) comes at the second level.

Once a potential victim arrives into one of the dodgy websites, they are offered to be awarded from USD 15 to SUD 45 in free Bitcoins daily. All they have to do to get those coins is to download a piece of software called “Bitcoin Collector,” which is supposed to “generate” BTC for free. That’s not what this program does, of course.

Beware of g[r]eeks bearing gifts

So the “Bitcoin Collector” gets downloaded, the user extracts and, in so doing, a bunch of files are created. Chief among them is “BotCollector.exe” which will run “Freebitco.in – Bot”.

The recently installed software won’t get users any BTC. It will download and install malware software into the victim’s computer instead.

A Twitter user known as Frost is a malware researcher who’s warned people about the scam. According to him, the malware evolves in two different ways. “BotCollector.exe” initially launched a piece of ransomware called “Marozka Tear Ransomware.”

In a ransomware attack, a computer’s files are encrypted by the malware. Then the owner gets a digital ransom note, in a text file usually warning them that if they don’t get in contact with the hacker team to agree on a payment mechanism, all the data will be lost or will remain inaccessible.

The ransomware aspect is not as severe as it used to be because nowadays a user can get the HiddenTear Decrypter utility, which will decrypt the affected files without the need for any payment. So the hackers have adapted to the new reality, and now, it installs a Trojan Horse that steals information from the victimized computer.

Frost identifies the Trojan as Baldr, and it can steal files, get your browsing history, take screenshots, and even get your logins as passwords for all the accounts you use in your browser or the applications you run in the infected computer.

If you’ve been around those websites and tried out the “Bitcoin Collector” thing, you should run a good antivirus and malware scan as soon as you can, change all your passwords, and improve your security all around. Most importantly, keep in mind that nobody is likely to give you any cryptocurrency away for free or any more than fiat currency you give them. Act accordingly.

Disclaimer: Please do your ‘very own’ market research before making any investment in cryptocurrencies. Neither the writer nor the publication (TronWeekly.com) holds any responsibility for your financial loss.

Tron ponzi schemes: Burn your Tronix (TRX) away the hard way

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The peril

So you want to find a way to make a lot of money quickly and safely. Don’t we all? That’s one of the very reasons why some people become interested in crypto in the first place. There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s not even rare.

But if you read any book at all dealing with any kind of investments (the traditional stock market, commodities, forex, and yes, cryptocurrencies) the first piece of information that the author will try very hard to convey to you in the most precise way is this: becoming a trader or an investor is risky.

So the first thing you need to do whenever you get involved in any of those activities is to asses the risk they imply, and figure out how if it’s a good fit for your appetite for risk.

Risk appetite sounds like a very intuitive notion, but it’s actually defined in an HM Treasury paper as the amount of risk that an organization or individual are ready to accept, tolerate or be exposed at any moment. That definition expands in that paper by defining five types of risk appetite.

  • Averse: stays away from risk in all circumstances.
  • Minimalist: plays it safe but accepts a little inherent risk when there’s potential for a limited reward.
  • Cautious: also prefers to play it safe but it’s ready to accept residual risks that may have the potential for a limited reward only.
  • Open: it takes into account every option available and opts for the one with the highest probability to succeed with acceptable reward levels.
  • Hungry: wants to find options of high risk and great reward.

The thing to understand here is that none of those five preferences for risk is right. None is wrong either. Each of those approaches to risk management can be efficient depending on many factors that include the amount invested, the asset you’ve chosen to invest, potential market size, volatility, liquidity, politics, etc.

What we all would like would be a high level of return without any risk at all. And it will never happen. A risk is at the heart of any investment. As a matter of fact, risk and reward levels are very often directly proportional. The safer you are, the fewer you earn. And some risks are not inherent to the asset itself or to the market. There’s the risk of technical failure (your internet goes off just at the moment you were going to place that order and the perfect moment to make a profit, and the moment is lost), the risk of fraud, and things of the sort.

Meet Mr. Chrles Ponzi

Several smart contracts, created by anonymous users, have been popping up around the Tron network over the last few months. They offer high profits with no risk at all. The most popular one promises you 3.33% of daily growth for the amount you invested. And that will keep going on indefinitely (in principle, it could last forever). So, it just goes up all the time. Forever. Whatever the TRX or BTC price is. At that rate, you recover your initial investment in a month flat, and from then on, it’s all profit until Kingdom Come.

Does it sound kosher to you? Maybe you’d instead think that it just seems too good to be true. And you’d be right because that’s the case. This kind of “project” has been known as a “Ponzi Scheme” for more than a century because it was made famous by the notorious criminal Charles Ponzi.

He cheated investors out of his money using the trick that now bears his name. He would promise his victims a 50% return in a month and a half. 100% in three months. As he made people excited and the money came in, he used fresh money from new “investors” to pay the earlier victims off. He kept going on until August 1920. By then he caught The Boston Post’s eye, so the news organization thought it would be interesting to dig a little and do a little research about Mr. Ponzi’s returns. The inquiry stirred the investors and scared them off the scheme. They pulled their money out, and Mr. Ponzi spent 14 years in prison.

As explained previously, a Ponzi scheme promoter pays his first investors back by raising money from new investors. But the potential investor pool is not infinite, to say the least, so sooner or later he will run out of fresh money coming in. At this point, the scheme collapses.

Ponzi schemes are not all that rare, and they keep happening everywhere in the world. And gullible people keep falling for them. And now, this kind of scheme has found its way into the crypto verse in general and, more specifically, into the Tron Main Net. Several smart contracts are programmed to behave in this exact way. How can you tell? Look for the following signs:

  • The promise of high investment returns at a very small or nonexistent risk. This is the third time we mention this and, chances are it won’t be the last because it’s just so important. Risk begets profit, and there’s just no way around that. It’s almost a physical law (actually, it’s not very different from the Second Law of Thermodynamics). Even if you choose the safest possible asset in the world, you will still have to deal with bad days in which things go South. If you really want to have no risk at all (which is understandable), then you will need the resignation of keeping your level of wealth precisely as it is.
  • Excessively uniform returns. Markets are never flat. This is true of every financial market known to man, and the cryptocurrency ecosystem is no different. Things are never dull, things are never consistent permanently. On the contrary, everything is changing all the time which is why it takes skill and knowledge to make a buck. Anything that promises you a permanent 3.33% return every day without exception is just deceptive because it’s unnatural as markets go.
  • Anonymous team. Most clean projects in the world have a team behind it which is not shy about letting you know who they are. That’s because successful legitimate projects help build a team’s reputation so that they can keep developing new projects and getting support from investors and the community. But being vocal about who they are also means that they can be held accountable for any misbehavior. Since the internet and the cryptosphere allow for various degrees of anonymity, it’s no surprise at all that fraudulent operations are run by invisible individuals or teams. Distrust anonymity thoroughly when it comes to giving your money for somebody. Especially in the Tron network.
  • Convoluted or secret investment strategies: never invest in something you don’t understand or somewhere in which the investing process is just a black box in which you can’t look under the hood at all. It’s your money. You have every right (and need) to get every bit of relevant information about how your money will be used. This is particularly important because the Ponzi scheme promoters in the Tron network are merely getting started. More elaborate schemes will appear in the future, and it behooves you to be able to tell them apart from the rest. Those who run these schemes say, of course, it’s no scam at all. But the facts are quite simple when it comes to this. If that’s the only argument they can offer, and if they can only pay back old customers with the money they get from the new ones, then it’s a Ponzi scheme however you want to look at it.
  • Getting payment not straightforward and encouragement to roll over: if getting paid is not quick and painless, be suspicious. Casinos and gambling sites love to get your money, but when you ask for a withdrawal (assuming you’re so good at betting that you actually can win consistently, which is no mean feat), they are quick to pay. Keep also in mind that Ponzi scheme administrators will encourage you very strongly to “roll over” your funds. That way, they don’t need to pay you.
  • But we are in a blockchain network. And blockchains are a technology designed specifically to bridge trust gaps. In any other environment, getting some kinds of information is just impossible unless you’re willing to break the law (which we do not recommend). But in a blockchain such as Tron’s (and this applies even to Bitcoin’s blockchain as well) the transaction information that the network carries out is transparent. So all it takes is a bit of basic research for you to get all the information you need to know if a given smart contract is real or a scam.

Ponzi-like smart contracts: The next generation in financial fraud

P3T Daily Roi seemingly qualifies as the oldest Ponzi scheme running on Tron. It’s a smart contract that allows users to deposit and withdraw TRX each minute. If you leave your tokens there for a full day, you get a 3.33% return on your tokens daily.

We have more to say on this but, before we move on, let’s just do the Math on this. How much is 3.33% really? How much will it yield in a year for you? Well, fortunately, it’s a straightforward calculation to perform. It’s merely 1.0333 to the power of 365. That’s 155828.44.

That means that, if this were true, you’d get 155828.44 for every TRX token you invest, if you just leave it there for a full year. This kind of earnings is unheard of in the real world. Even when stocks such as Yahoo, just to mention one, soared to the stratosphere, they didn’t pay that much back. Maybe even drug dealing can’t get you that kind of returns.

It started slowly as only a few people tried it out. But then, after a little marketing and time, it took off, and people came to the site in high volumes. Put a lot of tokens into it. At its peak, it had around 37 million Tronix coins (which is not very far from a million bucks). This happened a couple of weeks ago only. And then, the P3T encouraged the participants to leave their tokens in the system so they could take advantage of compound interest. What a surprise, huh? Well, most of them did roll over.

By then, those who got in early had “earned” a reward level (compound interest is real, and it grows fast) number of tokens that was more than enough to bring the whole scheme down, should those early adopters chose to withdraw their funds. And they did. To a degree, they started to cash their coins out, and the whole P3T community got panicked. A chain reaction started. People were not so willing to roll over anymore and wanted to get their rewards there and then.

As all that happened, the contract’s value went way down which caused new investors to stay away. In only a week, the “project” had lost more than half of its value (to about 15 million TRX). It’s wholly consumed now. The P3T team tried to get new investors like if their lives depended on it so they could pay back to all the users that were leaving. But the writing was on the wall, and the P3T ship was sinking. It was beyond salvation, and even a vast TRX injection could not prevent the contract to become nill in a few weeks at the most.

But P3T wasn’t unique at all. Other similar smart contracts have popped up around Tron. They wear the camouflage of an honorable project. The improve on durations, sustainability and reward circles. So the makeup is effective in making an ugly thing look pretty, and it makes it harder to tell a fraud when you see it. They do look more respectable, but they’re still Ponzi schemes, make no mistake about it.

Investments vs. Financial Fraud

So what’s the difference between sheer Fraud and a real project? For a start, Ponzi schemes can’t last very long. The pool’s alleged value grows too quickly to be sustained by new investors alone, and because the scheme creates no legitimate revenue at all, it just can’t keep going.

There’s no service or product associated with Ponzi schemes, so these are projects that have no way at all to make money. There’s no innovation, no production, no value is added into anything at all. Only the creating team and the early participants get something out of it.

And that’s different from authentic projects precisely because real projects are designed to behave oppositely. They will use a resource to create something. To come up with a solution to a problem that people actually need to solve.

If it solves said problem conveniently, it will grow naturally and create a sustainable income. Those projects could remain around for years and even thrive, even if they have to deal with losses every now and then. They stay around because they have the fundamentals needed to continue to create revenue.

Financial fraud is a thing!

So you need to know which other smart contracts look like Ponzi schemes? Well, let’s see… 4Days Profit, 12 ROI, FOMO 7, Rising ROI, Rocket Roi Dynamic, Turbo Dynamic ROI, Rocket ROI, 100roi, Turbo ROI, Tron Vault, or TronBank.

Those are the more obvious ones, but there could be more, and the future will bring us lots more of them for sure. Don’t take our word for it, we’re not accusing anybody. Just visit those websites and see what they offer compared with the red flags we gave you earlier in this article so you can make a decision on your own.

But they do meet with all the criteria as far as we can tell. They seem to be acting as Ponzi schemes, and each does it in its very own way. Some will keep 15% of your initial deposit as a fee. Others will promise you a return in a few days, even a few hours. But each and every one of those contracts will end up out of cash, and they will crash down just as P3T did. It’s just a matter of time.

P3T ignited greed in Tron. It began a trend of get-rich-quick mania. It’s seeming success inspired all the other equally fraudulent sites by promising users to make them rich without any risk or effort.

As P3T’s ending begun, there were users depositing hundreds of thousands of TRX tokens in the hopes of profiting. Now that the contract is empty, chances are that many among them lost most of the assets they invested in it.

So what will happen in the future?

We’ve been through the shrimp farm mania, gambling mania, and daily ROI mania. Actually, we’re still stuck on ROI mania. We can and should expect other scam bubbles to appear in the network in the future. This isn’t cynicism or pessimism, but if we’re not aware of them, then we can’t protect ourselves from them.

Maybe the next scheme to become a thing in Tron (and other blockchains) will be the pyramid scheme. It’s been quite successful in the real world for years, and it’s even gained a degree of respectability for something that’s inherently fraudulent.

The pyramid scheme is not a Ponzi scheme, but there are similarities. The pyramid is based on networking and network marketing. The “official” idea is that the profits in sales are shared among all the person in a given thread within the pyramid, all the way to the top.

Much as Ponzi scheme, these models also fail because there’s just not enough people to support the absurd amount of rewards promised by the model. There is such a contract in Tron already. And others will appear as that one becomes successful, at least for a short while.

The Crux

So hereś the beef. You should never get involved in any smart contract that:

  • Guarantees profits while promising high returns.
  • Claims it can’t fail (that there’s no risk).
  • Insists in you rolling over and no cashing out or makes it difficult for you to collect your earnings.
  • Says it has a sophisticated and complicated system to create revenue that we mortals couldn’t possibly understand because we’re not financial gods as the anonymous team behind this project is.
  • Offers no service, sells no product, solves no problem but greed.
  • As things stand right now, Tron community members seem to prefer gambling and get-rich-easy schemes. So it’s fertile ground for con artists. This is terrible news for the individuals that have lost money in the past because of this, and for those who will lose it in the future. But it’s terrible news for Tron and the world’s blockchain community as a whole as well because it discredits a powerful and innovative technology that can be used for good.

This will only change if we the users educate each other, denounce frauds as frauds, and focus on real projects that have real fundamental value. Yeah, that’s much harder. It takes expertise, time, energy and hard work. But that’s great for everybody.

Image courtesy of Pixabay.

Disclaimer: The presented information is subjected to market condition and may include the very own opinion of the author. Please do your ‘very own’ market research before making any investment in cryptocurrencies. Neither the writer nor the publication (TronWeekly.com) holds any responsibility for your financial loss.

Beware of Reyna’s swapped tokens

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The Reyna Project (or Reyna Limited) is an anonymity network which started running on Tron’s blockchain and issued three cryptocurrencies based on Tron known as REY, REC, and RET, It’s based on Valletta, Malta which is probably world’s most friendly country towards blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies. In the project’s own words, it’s a “comprehensive embracing of the broadcast web” in which privacy is guaranteed for all users, and censorship is impossible to enforce.

Reyna is on the move

Reyna is moving out of Tron. It will adopt Waves as its permanent platform and, as it has to happen whenever a blockchain project moves to a new home, those who own either REY, REC or RET tokens must have them swapped for coins compatible with the new platform. It has already left Tron as we write this.

The swap was announced by Anthony Kudaev (one of Reyna’s Limited founders) a couple of weeks ago in his Twitter account.

But things are not running so smoothly and it seems that something fishy is going on.

The Trontokens website has marked the three Reyna tokens as scams.

The organization is conducting further research as we write this but it reported in its website (trontokens.org) that “too much troubling things” are happening around the token Swap and the move.

It seems that swapped tokens are being sold instead of being burned, which should be the way to do things as you move the project to the new platform. The problem is that it’s illegal and nobody seems to know for sure what or why is going on.

The platform change is happening very quickly after the project’s decentralized exchange (based on Tron’s) went live, only three weeks ago (Feb. 4th). That very process wasn’t very smooth either as the technology had lots of bugs and glitches that had to be fixed before it could go live.

We ignore what’s happening with the swap. We do know that Mr. Kudaev has experience dowing cryptocurrency swaps because his project’s tokens migrated from TRC10 to TRC20 token technology only last December, on the day right after Christmas. He was also very enthusiastic about the Tron network and several of its decentralized applications (especially GOC).

The Reyna Project

The Reyna ecosystem includes several interesting apps in which privacy is the paramount value. ReynaChat is a chatting app which uses the project’s own encryption protocol to keep all the information private.

ReynaExchange is a wallet that supports any TRC20-based token and the Tron’s Foundation blockchain (or at least, it used to, but the details about the migration to Waves are still not very clear), The ReynaProtocol supports mutual and optional authentication, identity hiding, secrecy, encryption and other features in which cryptographic technology enhances the user’s privacy.

The project’s web-browsing apps are available for both Apple and Android mobile phones at the usual app stores.

We hope that the Reyna leadership will address the situation and let people in the cryptosphere know with all clarity what they’re doing and why. In a project that privileges anonymity and privacy above everything else, transparency is absolutely necessary, especially when it’s going through a milestone as important as migrating platforms.

Image courtesy of Pixabay.

Disclaimer: The presented information is subjected to market condition and may include the very own opinion of the author. Please do your ‘very own’ market research before making any investment in cryptocurrencies. Neither the writer nor the publication (TronWeekly.com) holds any responsibility for your financial loss.

Tron (TRX) investor? Be Careful with Kiwidex.io

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The Warning

A couple of days ago, the TronTokens Official Twitter account issued a warning about a little-known website called Kiwidex (kiwidex.io). We show you the text of the tweet:

In order to assess the warning about the website we took a few minutes to get acquainted with kiwidex.io and we, as well, detected a few things that are a tiny bit suspicious.

The website

It starts at the get-go. The website sells itself as “The world’s first decentralized exchange bases on TRON and supports mobile terminal”. Let’s not pay attention to the fact that people who’re doing this website can’t even write English (it’s supposed to be “based” not “base”). But nevermind the grammatic pedantry, the statement is just completely false.

The first Tron-based decentralized exchange was the DEX hosted at Tronscan. There’s just no way around that. And after Tronscan it was GOC. So things start to look fishy as soon as our browser loaded the webpage.

And about the rest of the warning, well, things don’t look any better.

If every deposit you do into the site is sent into a single address every time, then it just cannot be a decentralized service. The whole point in decentralization is that no single node in a network has any privilege, so if this was decentralized (as it claims), every transfer should be sent to a different node in the network.

Of course, those would have to be authorized nodes to take deposits in, so if the list was small, it would make sense, but you can’t have a decentralized network of one, just as you can’t have a football team of one.

So it’s centralized, that seems quite obvious?

What about P2P? Well, it’s a corollary. You need peers in order to build a p2p network, and if everything goes to a single address, that means that there are no peers, but only one central authority.

Should everybody avoid it?

So far we’re only telling you about things that are absolutely obvious because of the warning and from a very quick inspection to the website. Should you listen to that Twitter warning and stay away from the site? We believe so.

There are already good, reliable, and safe decentralized exchanges in the Tron network. We already mentioned two. So there’s is no need for you or anybody else to take even the smallest risk by sending tokens into a website that looks weird from the get-go.

Let’s just be clear about something: We don’t have proof positive that kiwidex.io is false, or dangerous, or fraudulent. What we are saying is, quite simply, that it doesn’t look great, and running useless risks is just pointless.

Investing in cryptocurrencies is already quite risky (which was the only truthful statement we found at the site), so why make it riskier by using a service whose reputation is questionable so easily and so quickly?

Image courtesy of Pixabay.

Disclaimer: The presented information is subjected to market condition and may include the very own opinion of the author. Please do your ‘very own’ market research before making any investment in cryptocurrencies. Neither the writer nor the publication (TronWeekly.com) holds any responsibility for your financial loss.