Scam? The crisis faced by token projects

In recent years, blockchain projects have emerged one after another. In order to win the trust of investors, project owners have proposed various novel application scenarios and packaged them with sophisticated white paper reports and celebrity endorsements . For virtual currencies that have been successfully put into application scenarios, it is natural that their financing channels are smooth due to the substantial increase in their use value. However, for tokens that have not achieved the expected application scenarios, some operations of the project owners may cause themselves to fall into criminal legal risks .

01Choice of blockchain project parties

Payment transactions, banking, gaming, supply chain finance and other scenarios are the focus of blockchain project design and use value. Due to the wide range of applications of blockchain virtual currency, we can find a variety of creative ideas in blockchain projects and can see them in various publicity channels.

However, due to the large number of creative ideas, many creative ideas in blockchain projects have difficulty in implementation . As far as the Sajie team knows, there is a new virtual currency that uses a specific bank as an application scenario, which was widely promoted in the white paper but was ultimately rejected by the partner bank.

When the specific application scenarios described in the white paper and other promotional content turn into bubbles, some project owners choose to seek new partners to implement the content of the application scenarios. However, some project owners choose to make false propaganda to investors, or even sell and buy by themselves to increase the amount of capital circulation, creating a thriving scene, so as to achieve the purpose of investors overestimating the value of tokens.

02Criminal Legal Risk Analysis

As for the subsequent behavior of the project party who failed to disclose information truthfully and even made false propaganda to induce investors to make misunderstandings, since the purpose of the project party is to make investors pay virtual currency to it and dispose of property interests , the Sister Sa team believes that such behavior has constituted the crime of fraud stipulated in Article 266 of the Criminal Law of the People's Republic of China, and the project party must bear criminal responsibility for this, which may be sentenced to life imprisonment at most.

Some friends may wonder, the legal status of virtual currency in our country is vague and in a gray area , why would defrauding virtual currency constitute a crime ?

In this regard, on the one hand, it should be made clear that, in accordance with Article 1 of the Notice of the People's Bank of China, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the China Banking Regulatory Commission, etc. on Preventing Bitcoin Risks, Bitcoin is a " specific virtual commodity ". Fraudulent use of Bitcoin or similar virtual currencies is an act of allowing the victim to dispose of property interests based on a mistaken understanding, and will not affect the criminal composition of the crime of fraud. On the other hand, the legality of an object usually does not affect the establishment of a crime of property infringement. For example, the act of a third party stealing stolen goods or obscene items also meets some of the criminal composition of theft. Some friends also believe that the price of virtual currency in the currency circle has become normal due to various factors, and there is no necessary connection between the project party's exaggeration and the investors' falling into the trap. Why not?

It is true that in the current situation where there are a lot of mixed investors in the cryptocurrency circle, it has become common to raise the price of new coins based on speculative demands. In this environment, speculators who blindly follow the trend seem to have ignored the value foundation of virtual currencies. However, from the perspective of legal professionals, the Sajie team believes that for various types of virtual currencies based on blockchain algorithms, the value of their currency should still depend on the application value behind them, and this is what investors should consider when investing. Therefore, when handling cases, judicial authorities will also presume that the project party's falsification of application scenarios is sufficient to interfere with most cryptocurrency investment behaviors, causing investors to fall into cognitive errors .

03Written at the end

People are always skeptical about unfamiliar areas . However, judgments based on a half-understood area can easily breed blind confidence, thus touching the red line of the law. The issuance of blockchain virtual currency has nothing to do with crime, but the act of fabricating and making up facts to maintain the operation of the project will change the nature of the project and may be suspected of fraud. Please be cautious and think twice before acting. The above is today's sharing, thank you readers!