
Text | Ratchet
Text | Ratchet
In 2018, the advent of the concept of "cloud exchange" has caught the eyes of many practitioners in the currency circle.
No need for technology development, sharing depth and liquidity with top exchanges... In the eyes of many people, cloud exchanges are expected to realize "everyone can open an exchange".
Why is the cloud exchange a place full of crimes? Perhaps, since the slogan "everyone can open an exchange" was put forward, this road has gone astray...
secondary title
Funds that "never run away"
"A new project that will never run away is worth investing in." Recently, 99pool, a fund that claims to be "never run away", is being vigorously promoted in multiple fund project groups.
Its model is very simple: Players need to purchase NT coins issued by 99pool first, and then use NT to subscribe to the "virtual mining machine". After holding the mining machine for 40 days, they can get income. Currently, the price of an NT is around RMB 0.3.
image description 99pool mining machine price list Take the highest-grade mining machine "Zeus" on 99pool as an example. The price of this mining machine is 300,000 NT, and it can produce 420,000 NT after 40 days. Based on this calculation, its annualized rate of return is 365%. Obviously, this is a fund board. As long as it is a fund, it will run away. So, what gave 99pool the confidence to "never run away"? The answer is the so-called "cloud exchange". In 2018, leading cryptocurrency exchanges such as Binance, OKEx, and Huobi launched cloud exchange products one after another. Here, other exchanges can share the user system, depth and liquidity with these leading exchanges. "99EX is an exchange under OKEx, the world's top three exchange, and the transaction funds are fully managed by OKEx. 99pool is the latest mining pool business launched by 99EX. Therefore, 99pool will not run away." A 99pool promoter said to a book Blockchain said, "If you don't believe me, you can open the 99EX official website, which supports direct login with OKEx accounts." image description 99pool promoters' publicity skills But the truth is clearly not the case. Although it uses OKEx's exchange system and shares the same trading pool with OKEx, 99EX is just an exchange brand independent of OKEx, and the two have no affiliation. The assets of 99pool are not managed by OKEx, and it is impossible to prove that 99pool "will not run away" based on the sharing relationship. In fact, this is not the first time that OKEx's "open exchange" has been exposed to be suspected of operating funds and air currency scams. At the end of 2019, an OKEx open exchange called "New Coin" was launched, and then it launched BGD, GOLD and other air coins. After just a few months, these coins collapsed one after another, losing as much as 99%. And the traders on the New Zealand exchange are extremely arrogant. According to media reports, after the exchange crashed, the trader even issued a death threat to a activist investor, offering a reward of US$10,000 for his head. Since then, OKEx issued an announcement stating that the New Zealand currency exchange is suspected of fraudulent users, false propaganda and other problems, and that the OKEx open platform only provides underlying technology research and development, and does not participate in the actual operation of the exchange, reminding users not to be "OK sub-exchange" OKEx sub-brand" and other false propaganda to deceive. However, from the situation of 99pool, it is clear that OKEx has not kept its promise. Scams are rampant Two years ago, when Binance, OKEx, and Huobi launched cloud exchanges, they had a slogan: "Everyone can open an exchange." And the product "cloud exchange" was indeed once placed high expectations by the industry . In the past, if someone wanted to operate a digital currency exchange, he needed to develop a trading system by himself, which had certain technical difficulties. After the new exchange goes online, its transaction volume and transaction depth are also difficult to match the old exchanges, and it is difficult to win the favor of users. It seems that cloud exchanges have solved these two major problems. First of all, cloud exchanges eliminate the need for exchange operators to perform any technical development work. Secondly, sharing the trading depth with the leading exchanges means that once the new cloud exchange goes online, it can obtain trading depth and liquidity comparable to that of the leading exchanges. Because of this, when the concept of cloud exchange came out, the industry was unanimously optimistic about it. But in the past two years, the cloud exchange has become a hotbed of scams such as air coins, funds and killing pigs. And "sharing the same exchange system" has also become a common feature of a group of fraudulent exchanges that have quietly emerged. At the beginning of this year, an exchange called AmberEX quietly appeared and launched a project called "Blue Fire Mining Pool" (BFB). According to AmberEX, the Blue Fire Mining Pool is jointly created by AmberEX and the "Blue Fire Community Alliance". In the white paper and promotional soft-text of Bluefire Mining Pool, the target of the project is Huahuo, a fund project popular in the currency circle before, with "limited risks and unlimited benefits". But the Blue Fire Mining Pool is just an imitation of Huahuo. Players need to invest 15,000 USDT to subscribe for a so-called "AMR-S1 mining robot". Compared with Huahuo, it has little innovation in the mode. What's even more ironic is that in April this year, AmberEX also issued an announcement announcing that the platform had successfully launched a spacecraft and deployed 1,000 "AMR-S1 mining robots" on Mars. Some players broke the news that AmberEX shares a system with exchanges such as XMEX and BMEX, which are popular in the currency circle recently, and are operated by the same company. One evidence is that the logos of dozens of exchanges such as XMEX and BMEX appear in the Android installation package of AmberEX. image description There are a lot of exchange logos in the AmberEX installation package "Now, you only need to spend tens of thousands of dollars to buy an exchange system and make your own exchange." Zhao Li, the developer of the exchange system, told Yiben Blockchain, "Contract, spot, fiat currency, Platform currency, as long as money is added, each module can be added and customized at will.” vicious circle "90% of the new exchanges that have emerged in the past two years are trading systems for direct purchases." Zhao Li said, "For example, the contract sections of BiKi and Matcha are all outsourced to the chain technology." The emergence of cloud exchanges has greatly reduced the technical threshold of exchanges. Therefore, the bosses who operate the pig-killing scam in the traditional futures circle have also aggressively entered the currency circle and brought the notorious "customer loss model". And their large demand for the exchange system further gave birth to the development of cloud exchanges. The industry has thus entered a vicious cycle. According to Zhao Li, today, there are at least dozens of cloud exchange service providers in the industry, sharing this market. And most of them do not reject customer loss exchanges. When a blockchain communicated with an exchange developer as a partner, the other party said: "The system for betting against users is a little more expensive. This is more risky for you and us. It is best to communicate face-to-face. " The quotation he gave was 480,000 yuan for six months. Why does the cloud exchange choose to work with scammers? The answer is simple: it is almost unprofitable to do serious business without touching capital or killing pigs. "Regular exchanges generally develop their own trading systems and rarely purchase third-party solutions." Mao Pu, an exchange practitioner, told Yiben Blockchain, "The trading system is the core asset of the exchange. Even the system must be outsourced." Exchanges have no future." Not so with scam exchanges. These exchanges are counting on "catch and go." For them, purchasing an off-the-shelf system is the most cost-effective solution. Therefore, low-cost cloud exchanges are favored by scammers. And another type of object that the cloud exchange is trying to serve—big V in the currency circle and Internet celebrities with their own traffic, has also been proved to be not a qualified exchange owner. "The currency circle is not a fan circle. Players in the currency circle rely on rationality to invest. They may be fans of a certain big V, or even follow the big V's investment strategy, but they will not choose to invest in the exchange opened by the big V. "Sun Yuan, a blockchain researcher, said. "Even if the big Vs get users, they are still low-quality users. It is almost impossible for high-quality users to choose small exchanges to invest in." He said. In the end, the cloud exchange has become a place full of scams. In Sun Yuan’s view, cloud exchanges have become polarized. Cloud exchanges that serve funds and kill pigs are quite profitable, but cloud exchanges that are "clean and self-sufficient" have almost no business to do. Bad money drives out good money, and the market degenerates further. The cloud exchange has changed from an industry star to a place where filth is hidden, but in the blink of an eye.secondary title
secondary title