The Swiss financial market authority has announced that the developers of fake coins received $4.2 million from the scam. The accused will also be charged with operating a financial transactions business without the required banking license. The developers were operating a company named QUID PRO QUO Association which was also working with two other companies to create and sell the fake e-coins. The authorities have stated that the fake E-coins by the developers were different from the genuine cryptocurrencies. In this case, the coins were stored on local servers and not a wallet, where transfers are supposed to be recorded on a distributed ledger.
Most genuine E-coins are bought and sold by C-CEX and the Nova exchange site.
The legitimate E-coin (ECN)
The legitimate E-Coin is ranked 181 cryptocurrencies by Market Capitalization. Its current price is $3.26. A low price would easily lure anyone to buy the cryptocurrency without checking for the authenticity of the seller. E-coin was developed on April 11 this year with an introductory price of $1.43. The coin has increased by 127 percent since it was introduced. The coin is categorized as a mineable cryptocurrency according to coinmarketcap.com with a market capitalization of $13 million. There are 3.9 million E-coins currently in supply while 212 million E-coins are yet to be mined. In the last 24 hours, over $90,641 E-coins have exchange hands.
The future of cryptocurrencies
The future growth of cryptocurrencies will depend on reduced fraud cases and government support. Earlier this month, Chinese authorities banned initial coin offerings (ICO). With ICO, developers of a new cryptocurrency can sell newly created coins to investors for crowdfunding purposes. China stated that unscrupulous individuals could take advantage of such an initiative to scam people.
Chinese authorities also ordered the shutting down of exchange sites operating within its economy. The move resulted in the fall in the prices of cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin's, whose price fell from highs of $4,900 to $3,000 within two weeks. The prices of cryptocurrencies are still expected to grow as the number of people who possess them is still low and because the production of new mineable cryptocurrencies continues to reduce.
There are over 1,000 cryptocurrencies in the crypto market. With this discovery, It is still not known whether or not holders are holding real or fake cryptocurrencies. The market capitalization of 871 cryptocurrencies tracked by coinmarketcap.com is $136 billion; a small percentage of cryptocurrencies in this market capitalization could be fake.
