IOHK CEO Charles Hoskinson has distanced himself and the Cardano ecosystem from what appears to be an apparent scam using Cardano and ADA as a way to dupe Chinese farmers.
According to Mo Li, Head of Marketing at HashKey Hub, a roadshow in China which was allegedly hosted by 8BTC is shilling ADA to old farmers through pyramid selling or Multi-Level Marketing (MLM).
ADA is ranked no.6 now, after it got shilling to the old farmers by MLM . There’s a conference host by 8btc today , bunch of elders bought a banner written AD roadshow , they took a photo every quickly and left.. pic.twitter.com/ZVDGdGuejp
— Molly (@molllliy) July 5, 2020
Hoskinson immediately asked Li for more information and said the event appears to be a scam using his picture and Cardano’s logos without permission.
Li also shared a video of what she described as ‘MLM shilling’ of ADA to ‘old and rich farmers.’
Video of MLM shilling Ada to the old and rich farmers in case anyone hasn’t seen it… pic.twitter.com/tD3X0Q3uaQ
— Molly (@molllliy) July 5, 2020
Hoskinson further asserted he did not appreciate that Li is implying Cardano coordinated these types of events and countered that such fraudulent schemes regularly happens to the other top 10 cryptocurrencies as well.
The implication, Hoskinson said, was from Li’s first tweet that, to the IOHK CEO’s perception, is implying that ADA’s price has increased because it is being shilled in China to old and rich farmers. Hoskinson said they will ask Li’s employer HashKey if Li’s assertion is a statement of the company as well.
“These events have nothing to do with ADA or its recent appreciation. They are illegal. The people running them often just take the money and run. You know I have nothing to do with then. They have no affiliation with anyone in the Cardano ecosystem.” – Charles Hoskinson, IOHK on Twitter
While Hoskinson and other Crypto Twitter personalities argued about whether Cardano is aware of the MLM or not, 8BTC, the alleged organizer of the event where the MLM group did a roadshow, also distanced themselves from the pyramid project.
We 8btc, host of the HangzhouInternationalBlockchain Week conference, has NOTHING to do with this AD project. It appears they’re taking advantage of our conference to shill their coin. We condemn such actions and will watch to keep them off
— 8BTCnews (@btcinchina) July 6, 2020
Currently, Cardano is the 8th largest cryptocurrency by market cap. Just like Bitcoin, it rose from the March 2020 crash and has printed a massive 323% increase in value since then. The appreciation seems to be because of the latest positive news around ADA.
On July 3, IOHK announced during the Cardano Virtual Summit that it had signed an agreement with Coinbase Custody to allow users to stake their ADA tokens inside Coinbase Cold Storage beginning Q4 2020. This comes on the heels of Shelley, Cardano’s protocol which is expected to fully come online later this month with staking rewards starting in August.
During the summit, IOHK also announced a $20 million fund to invest in startups that will use Cardano and other IOHK technology.
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