A ‘trading agent channel’, which impersonates Bithumb and purchases cryptocurrencies on behalf of users, is in operation in the game SNS Discord. There are over 600 users on this channel, and high-value transactions are made from $10 to $45,000 (55 million won), so users should be cautious about it.
Trading agent channel that trades cryptocurrencies on behalf of users through KakaoTalk
This channel is currently being operated by Discord under the name of ‘Bithumb Agent Korea’. This channel cannot be accessed through normal search. You can enter this channel only through an invitation link provided by an insider.
This channel provides cryptocurrency purchase and transfer services like a normal cryptocurrency exchange. To purchase cryptocurrency through this channel, you must enter the KakaoTalk one-on-one open chat room in the announcement. After that, users need to write the △name of the depositor △coin and amount they want to purchase, and △the wallet address to receive cryptocurrencies in the chat room. It takes about 30 minutes for the channel manager to confirm the deposit and send the cryptocurrencies to the user’s wallet address. All services provided by this channel must be paid in cash only.
This channel also sells cryptocurrencies on behalf of users. ‘Bithumb Agent Korea’ channel will get a fixed fee of 30,000 won if the amount of cryptocurrency sold is less than 500,000 won. If the amount of cryptocurrency sold is less than 1 million won, they will get 4.5% of the amount in Korean won. On the 25th, when a user sold Bitcoin worth 500,000 won at CoinOne, the fee that the user had to pay to the exchange was 1,000 won.
There is no verification process on this channel
Why do people use trading agent service even though they have to pay much more expensive fees than exchanges? This is because there is no complicated verification process on this channel.
In the trading agent channel operated by Discord, KYC process is not required. In general, if you want to buy cryptocurrencies in Korean won at the exchange, you will be required a KYC process that takes a selfie and submits it. In four major exchanges of Korea, △Bithumb △Upbit △CoinOne △Korbit, you can deposit Korean won through a real name account linked with a bank. In other exchanges, the transaction are carried out through a ‘corporate account for bill collecting’ where the user deposits Korean won into the corporate account of the exchange and the exchange checks the depositor one by one.
However, the trading agent channel only checks whether the names of applicants and depositors who want to buy cryptocurrencies are the same. Since this channel is SNS that guarantees anonymity, the entity that sells cryptocurrency is unclear, and the users who buy it do not prove their identities. When a problem occurs in an environment in which the responsibilities of both sides are unclear, the one who suffers more damage is the buyer who deposits KRW.
The manager of the trading agent channel said, “This channel is unrelated to Bithumb”
Although this channel is not related to Bithumb, it pretends to be official partner of Bithumb. This channel is using the logo of Bithumb without permission and pretending to be officially related to Bithumb through announcements.
We asked the channel manager to verify the facts, and he confessed that this channel is not related to Bithumb. “This channel is not officially operated by Bithumb,” he added. When we asked for a trading agent service to learn more about the service, he explained, “We are only dealing with high-value transactions, so all small purchases are suspended.”
In this channel, there is a ‘Transaction Status’ menu that releases the amount of transactions so far in real time. According to this data, the highest price of a single transaction is about $45,000 (55 million won).
Bithumb plans to take a strong action on this issue. An official of Bithumb said, “Bithumb does not operate any other brokerage agencies except for the exchange.” “There were many cases of impersonating Bithumb in the past, and we gave strong warnings through the announcements,” he added. He also said, “We will request this case to the Korean National Police Agency and Korea Internet and Security Agency.”
Cho Jae-seok(2020.03.26) 빗썸 사칭하며 암호화폐 거래하는 디스코드 ‘대행방’이 등장했다
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