Ant Group denies any connection to 'Ant Coin'

(ATF) The continuous rise of bitcoin has once again brought fire to the virtual currency market. Recently, talk of a virtual currency called “Ant Coin Bitant” circulated widely on social media with claims that it was “led by Alibaba, endorsed by the central bank of China, and had participation by SMIC”.

However, Ant Group says the company has never cooperated with “Ant Coin” in any form.

On the official website of “BAT Antcoin” there is an eye-catching introduction on the homepage: “BAT Antcoin was jointly created by the People’s Bank of China and Alibaba Group.”

The website also showed that the currency was first issued in the United States on March 10, with an issue price of $1 per coin and a circulation of 50 million coins.

The platform has also built an online virtual currency trading platform to support online transactions of Bitcoin, Ethereum and “Antcoin”. In the seven days since online trading began on March 10, “Ant Coin” had allegedly risen from the issue price of US$1 to $31.

For investors who do not know the truth and have a strong interest in “AntCoin”, this matter aroused significant discussion on various investment forums and WeChat groups, according to Beijing Daily.

That led Ant Group to say: “The company does not have any cooperative relationship with the so-called ‘Ant Coin’. The Ant Group has always been committed to solving real problems with technology, and will not participate in or support any virtual currency issuance and hype. Investors should pay attention to screening risks.”

Since the beginning of this year, the price of bitcoin has continued to rise, and the price of a single coin has even exceeded $60,000, setting a record high.

Scams to dupe ordinary investors

In this environment, some virtual currency projects under the guise of blockchain have created scams to dupe ordinary investors and exploit people’s lack of basic understanding about bitcoin to concoct various fraudulent schemes through the concept of virtual currency.

Bitcoin is a virtual encrypted digital currency in the form of P2P. The decentralized nature of P2P and the algorithm itself can ensure that the value of the currency cannot be manipulated by mass production of bitcoin. The design is based on cryptography which ensures bitcoin can only be ‘real.’

The biggest difference between bitcoin and other virtual currencies is that its total number is very limited, and it needs to be generated through a large number of calculations based on a specific algorithm.

Although virtual currency is called “currency”, it does not have market liquidity and has no value-scale function. It can only be used as a “product” for trading and investment.

Some financial frauds and multi-level-marketing activities are often packaged with the concept of hype around virtual currency, using high-yield expectations as bait to attract investors to invest through online trading platforms.

So, buyer beware!