There are so many red flags and questions raised on the existence of TrueUSD. Let’s have a look at all of the concerns related to TrueUSD and find out whether it is safe to invest in TrueUSD or not.
Crypto Coin Scam
Scam coin
A scam coin is a false cryptocurrency that was produced with the intention of making money for the developer while robbing backers and investors of their money.
A scam coin is a phony cryptocurrency designed to steal investors’ funds. The Squid Game Token was one of the most egregious examples of a fraudulent coin. This cryptocurrency gained popularity alongside the show it was named after and made promises about what users would be able to achieve with the coin.
However, consumers quickly learned that once investing, there was no way to sell the coin. The developers pulled the coin down and vanished with the investors’ money after only a few weeks.
One of the numerous different fake coin enterprises that are now active. It can be challenging to tell them apart from reliable cryptocurrency investments. Additionally, as a result of cryptocurrency’s increased popularity, more coins are being scammed.
Types of scam coins
Although there are many different kinds of scam coins available today, some are more well-known than others. Due to the new nature of cryptocurrencies and the ubiquity of these frauds, they can be more difficult for beginners to recognize.
Rug pulls, sometimes known as false ICOs
The rug pull is the first and most common scam coin. This kind of fake coin includes the Squid Game Token discussed above. A new coin enters the market, creates a lot of hype, and before anyone has a chance to discover it’s a hoax, the developers lock down trade, pocket the money, and vanish.
This strategy frequently includes an inability to cash out. Investors only become aware that there is no option to exchange for another coin or return to fiat money after investing in the cryptocurrency. This makes repairing the harm this kind of deception has done all but impossible.
Cloud mining
Mining is the process used to create a cryptocurrency. Typically, mining takes a lot of time and a powerful computer. However, mining yields complete cryptocurrencies, which have a potential value in the millions of dollars.
However, most people lack the money and expertise necessary to conduct mining themselves. This problem is what cloud mining takes advantage of.
Scams involving cloud mining make claims to provide these services. If this were accurate, it would imply that you could subscribe to a service that would mine coins on your behalf. Coins are given to your Bitcoin wallet once they have been mined.
Of course, reality differs from this. The scammers only build a website and collect funds; they never fulfill their promise and eventually vanish before drawing too much notice.
Fraudulent Wallets
Investors in cryptocurrencies are aware that having a cryptocurrency is a must for investing. Like a genuine wallet or debit card, this wallet stores access to your coins.
Scammers will build phony wallets since there is, at best, little regulation over who can create and handle cryptocurrency wallets. Either these wallets don’t exist, in which case you must send your cryptocurrency directly to the developer, or they aren’t secure, in which case the developer can access your data and take your coins.
What is a Ponzi Scheme?
A Ponzi scheme is a criminal deception investing fraud pledging increased rates of interest with less chance of loss to investors. On the other hand, a Ponzi scam is a deceitful investing fraud that induces retrievals for earlier investors with money carried from later investors.
How can I recognize cryptocurrency fraud?
Sadly, it frequently happens that scam coin victims don’t realize they’ve been scammed until it’s too late. And when this does occur, there are typically few options. You can search for some of the following indicators of a phony coin to prevent being conned.
Copied Material
Examining the materials that are linked is one of the quickest ways to determine whether a cryptocurrency is a fake coin. Scammers rarely bother to create their paperwork and legal documents because doing so runs the danger of disclosing information about their scheme.
Instead, they will imitate already-used components from other coins. There’s a strong possibility that a digital coin is a hoax if you discover that it copied information from another coin’s documentation or that the content was created using a template.
An effort to get others to invest
Watch out for referrals as this is another simple way to recognize a fake coin. Scam currencies frequently provide incentives for recommending users to the cryptocurrency, issue push alerts, and run advertising efforts to recruit new users.
This is typically done in an effort to swiftly con as many individuals as possible. Avoid making investments in cryptocurrencies using these strategies.
Investment packages for Bitcoin
The so-called “Bitcoin investment package” (or “BIP”) is a less frequent but still widespread sort of fraudulent coin. BIPs provide a Bitcoin investment with recurring payments that typically occur every week or month.
This may appear enticing to people who solely use cryptocurrencies as a quick way to get extra money. The majority of the time, these frauds simply use the money from new investors to pay out previous investors, and eventually, when new users stop signing up, they take their money and disappear with their investors.
Unbelievable in every way
Asking yourself if a cryptocurrency looks too good to be true is the final technique to determine if it is a scam coin. Cryptocurrencies can be a fantastic investment, but the likelihood that it will change your life for the better is, at best, remote. Any cryptocurrency that makes extraordinary guarantees or promises is likely to be a fraud rather than a secure investment.
About TrueUSD
Almost the past month, TrueUSD’s market cap has more than doubled to almost $2 billion. Although one of the businesses behind the True family of tokens, TrustToken Incorporated, promotes them as being “maximally transparent,” the truth is a little bit different.
TrustToken Incorporated, based in California, claims that they introduced TrueUSD (TUSD) in 2018. What is claimed by TrueUSD is that It initially attained a market cap of $1 billion in early May 2021 when it nearly tripled in less than a week. Since then, it has always been a minority stablecoin, trailing industry giants like Tether and Circle.
TrustToken claims in front of the media that it declared that the company would be changing to a new ownership structure many months sooner, in December 2020. On the MakerDAO governance forum, more information was provided, outlining how the ownership structure was shifting.
It described the business’s acquisition by Techteryx, an Asian conglomerate that operated in the “traditional real estate, entertainment, environmental, and information technology industries.” The article also claimed that Jennifer Jiang, the entity’s key investor, and a “deeply connected” investor, was established by Techteryx to buy TUSD.
Despite this change of ownership, Techteryx wouldn’t have any say over the money or the private keys, according to TrustToken.
Additionally, the company was clear to state that Justin Sun was not a part of its ownership. It felt the need to stress this since Sun was utilizing an Asian conglomerate to acquire BitTorrent and other products.
On TrueUSD’s website, Sun was previously identified as the “Asia Market Advisor,” however this listing has since been taken down.
When TrustToken Inc. announced in September 2022 that it was changing its name to Archblock, things only got more confusing.
Archblock has stated that it is distinct from Techteryx and that Sun does not hold any equity in the company. Justin Sun is no longer the company’s “Asia Market Advisor,” according to Archblock, which also stated that there is no ongoing business contact with him. In addition, Archblock claimed that it was unable to identify the other companies that Jennifer Jiang is associated with.
What additional True goods are there?
TrueToken provides a number of alternative stablecoins in addition to the dollar-pegged TrueUSD, including
- TrueGBP is pegged to the British pound.
- TrueCAD is pegged to the Canadian dollar.
- TrueHKD is fixed to the Hong Kong dollar.
- TrueAUD is pegged to the Australian dollar.
Additionally, there is a multi-stable coin pool called TrueFx as well as the uncollateralized DeFi lending platform TrueFi.
Although the TrueFi Foundation, which is domiciled in the British Virgin Islands, continues to assist with oversight, control of TrueFi has at least nominally been transferred to a DAO that will manage it. The TRU token controls the DAO’s governance.
The lead investor in TrustToken and the TRU token was Alameda Research.
Notably, TrueFi has witnessed a sharp decline in the number of loans it has extended as a result of numerous significant defaults, including Alameda Research. Alameda was in default on USDC loans from TrueFi and the TrueTrading team totaling around $7.3 million.
A message in the TrueFi forum claims that TrueTrading is an entirely-owned subsidiary of Archblock.
The TrustToken website describes TrueFX as “a stablecoin basket built on all five TrueCurrencies” as well. While TrueFX was described in an earlier Medium article by TrueFi as the LP tokens for a Balancer pool holding the five stablecoins, Protos was unable to uncover any additional information about a stablecoin basket.
TrueFX is the former name of all stablecoins that Archblock operates, the company has stated. To avoid misunderstanding, we shall hereafter refer to this as TrueCoin, and we emphasize that “the Balancer pool is a proof of concept only.”
Attestations and reserves
The stablecoins of the True family are touted as being “maximally transparent,” “independently attested,” and having “live updated proof of reserves.” This is made available through the TrustExplorer tool, which aims to provide users with a perspective into the present status of the blockchain’s reserves and tokens. Additionally, it makes it simple for consumers to get the most recent independent attestation.
The attestations, though, appear to have ceased. The most recent attestations for TrueAUD, TrueCAD, and TrueGBP are all dated January 31, 2023, whereas the last one available for TrueUSD is from December 31, 2022.
Neither attestations nor the TrustExplorer, which is intended to offer real-time insight, are offered by TrueHKD.
According to Archblock’s claim to Protos, the TrueHKD attestation can be found using “an embedded widget on the archblock.com/truecoin sites.” Protos’ inspection of that website revealed no TrueHKD attestation, therefore we contacted Archblock for more information.
Later, Archblock stated: “We decided to no longer offer live attestations due to low volumes, a small user base, and restricted use cases for THKD. We will be amending the website in relation to TrueHKD to reflect this decision. The email address for anyone with inquiries is su*****@tr******.com.
Armamino LLP was creating these attestations. The business also conducted an audit of FTX US, which has reportedly departed the Bitcoin industry.
TrustExplorer previously displayed which banks were holding the reserves for the various tokens, but it appears that this feature was deleted soon after cryptocurrency research firm ChainArgos noted that it displayed money being transferred from Signature Bank to other businesses. According to Archblock, this shift in conduct is connected to the “transition for the reinstatement of attestation with the new auditor.”
It’s interesting to notice that the sum mentioned by ChainArgos appears to be the same sum Bloomberg claimed was transferred to Capital Union in the Bahamas. Over the past few weeks, TrueUSD’s market cap has climbed by a comparable proportion.
On-chain behavior
TrueUSD is burned and issued much more frequently than rival stablecoins like USDT and USDC, according to ChainArgos.
The report also emphasized that Justin Sun and Alameda Research were the two biggest TrueUSD minters.
Other True stablecoins exhibit peculiar on-chain behavior. FTX was one of the biggest TrueAUD holders, according to blockchain analysis done by Protos, despite not appearing to support the coin.
Australian regulators are suing Finder over its Finder Earn program, which entailed converting customer payments into TrueAUD and using those funds to generate income.
It’s unclear how Finder would generate that income since the company’s directors recently sold Alameda Research the OTC trading desk that they used to bank FTX.
TrueAUD was used by other Australian businesses besides Finder as a component of a yield product. A very similar product manufactured by Swyftx has also since been discontinued. Despite claiming to be separate from the exchange, Swyftx has been found to buy almost all of its customers’ cryptocurrencies through Binance, according to the Australian Financial Review.
It appears that the yield on TrueAUD has previously been offered by both Celsius and Crypto.com.
What is TrueUSD up to?
It is difficult to determine who really owns these interwoven organizations. In particular, TrueUSD displays a tendency for abrupt, significant market cap growth accompanied by extremely active burning and minting.
One of the stablecoins that this team is offering looks to have no attestation, while the remainder has attestation that is getting progressively older. The team was been given advice by marketer Justin Sun, who had appropriated the look of a failed stablecoin for his own use.
This is what the website shows on how to invest in TrueUSD.
The two administrators of the TrueUSD official discord channel
A deep dig into the Investigation
As claimed by TrueUSD about their certifications, it shows that they have got certificates as shown below:
Code Audit
A software code audit is a comprehensive analysis of source code in a programming project with the intent of discovering bugs, security breaches, or violations of programming conventions. It is an integral part of the defensive programming paradigm, which attempts to reduce errors before the software is released. C and C++ source code is the most common code to be audited since many higher-level languages, such as Python, have fewer potentially vulnerable functions.
TrueUSD Reviews on various online platforms
- CoinMarketCap
The most popular price-tracking resource in the fast-expanding cryptocurrency market is CoinMarketCap. Its goal is to equip retail consumers with unbiased, reliable, and accurate information so they can make their own educated decisions. This will help make cryptocurrency efficient and accessible to everyone around the world.
When comparing thousands of crypto assets, individuals, institutions, and the media turn to CoinMarketCap, which was founded by Brandon Chez in May 2013. It is frequently quoted by CNBC, Bloomberg, and other top news organizations. (Even the US government does reports and research using CoinMarketCap data!)
TrueUSD has 0 followers on CoinMarketCap and here is the proof:
They haven’t posted anything and it portrays them as an inactive community. In fact, TrueUSD has millions of followers on these fake mediums as shown below:
There has been no engagement on their posts for a while as shown below:
- There has also been seen that TrueUSD has fake followers on social media platforms like Twitter as shown below:
And it is also noticed that there has been no engagement on their tweets which further proves that they have fake followers.
They show that they are on the watchlist of 8K people on CoinGeko and I believe that these stats are mostly manipulated.
- CoinGeko
CoinGecko offers a fundamental examination of the market for virtual currencies. CoinGecko measures community growth, open-source code development, significant events, and on-chain metrics in addition to price, volume, and market capitalization.
Look at the image below:
The value of the coin has spiked several times, which is usually done by scam coins to inflate the value and then exit.
- Coinbase
TrueUSD is not supported by Coinbase. Coinbase Global, Inc., branded Coinbase, is an American publicly traded company that operates a cryptocurrency exchange platform. Coinbase is a distributed company; all employees operate via remote work. It is the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the United States by trading volume.
- Youtube
TrueUSD recently requested YouTube videos from their Discord community, which filled their YouTube results with favorable videos about the coin. They use their Discord server to generate phony social proof.
- Members who are driven by money and make positive comments about TrueUSD on Twitter and the internet in an effort to raise the coin’s value.
- There are just 53 followers on their YouTube channel.
- It appears that TrueUSD hasn’t yet purchased subscribers.
Only 91 people follow TrueUSD on Instagram as well:
TrueUSD hasn’t posted on their Instagram account so far and even no one has tagged them on any post.
Why do their YouTube and Instagram sites have so few followers and engagement if they genuinely have thousands of loyal fans and followers? Is it strange?
Some of the red flags on TrueUSD are as follows:
Let’s have a look at some of the reviews on TrueUSD:
Singapore-based Techteryx, which issues TrueUSD, said Monday morning Asia time that minting and redemption are paused for its users with Signature Bank but continue unaffected across the rest of its banking network.
The stablecoin issuer revealed in a report from December that it distributes its holdings among a number of depository institutions in the Bahamas, Hong Kong, and the United States.
The market capitalization of TrueUSD is a little over $2 billion. According to Nansen.ai data, Binance is the exchange with $428 million worth of TrueUSD holdings. TrueUSD is currently trading on Binance for $0.997 after being decoupled from its peg.
Although it claims to have $240 million in cash on hand at Signature Bank, Coinbase can still execute transactions through other banking partners. Paxos also revealed that it has deposits at Signature Bank totaling $250 million, but claims to have private insurance on accounts in excess of FDIC insurance limitations.
On various platforms like Reddit people call it a scam
Crypto Coin Scams
Many different types of cryptocurrency fraud exist. Scammers want your cryptocurrency and will do anything to obtain it, just like they would with the money in your bank account. Knowing when and how to be targeted, as well as what to do if you think a cryptocurrency and communications associated with it are fraudulent, can help you secure your Bitcoin investments.
- Theft and con artists can obtain your cryptocurrency in a number of methods or con you into handing it to them.
- Scams involving cryptocurrencies frequently try to obtain sensitive data, including security codes, or con unwary individuals into sending money to a hacked digital wallet.
- Giveaways, love scams, phishing, extortion emails, phony company warnings, blackmail, rug pulls, initial coin offers (ICOs), non-fungible tokens (NFTs), and fraudulent mining software or networks are a few types of fraud.
- Poorly written white papers, overzealous marketing, and guarantees that you’ll make a lot of money rapidly are all indicators of cryptocurrency fraud.
- If you think you may have fallen victim to a crypto scam, you can get in touch with your cryptocurrency exchange and a number of government regulatory organizations.
Cryptocurrency Scams Types
Scams involving cryptocurrencies typically fall into one of two categories:
- Actions were taken with the intention of gaining access to a target’s digital wallet or authentication information. This means that con artists strive to obtain data that will grant them access to a digital wallet or other kinds of confidential data, including security codes. This can occasionally even mean having access to actual hardware.
- Directly sending cryptocurrency to a con artist via impersonation, false business or investment opportunities, or other nefarious tactics.
Wrapping Up with on How to Avoid CryptoCoin Scams
You can take a number of measures to prevent getting conned. You shouldn’t click on any links, call any numbers, get in touch with them in any way, or pay them money if you see any of the warning flags. Additionally:
- Never divulge your private Bitcoin keys in response to inquiries. No one requires those keys to do a lawful cryptocurrency transaction; they only control your access to your cryptocurrency and wallet.
- Don’t believe claims that you’ll earn a lot of money.
- Investment managers who contact you and promise to increase your money quickly should be ignored.
- Celebrities should be disregarded because they won’t approach people about purchasing cryptocurrencies.
- If you’re utilizing an online dating service or app, meet your love interests in person before you give them money.
- Never respond to texts or emails from well-known or obscure businesses claiming that your account has been frozen or that they are concerned.
- If a government, law enforcement agency, or utility business sends you an email, text message, or social media message informing you that your accounts or assets have been frozen and that you must give money or cryptocurrency, contact the organization and disregard the communication.
- Pay little attention to job postings for crypto miners or cash-to-crypto converters.
- Be skeptical of claims that they have explicit material of you that they want to publish until you provide cryptocurrency and report it.
- Refuse “free” money or cryptocurrency.
This is a scam. Don’t trust this site or the people behind it. You can deposit money but not withdraw it. I tried getting my money back for over a week and my withdrawals are always denied. Do your research and hold onto your money. I’m inclined to believe that many of the reviews online are fake. The “financial manager” assigned to me was friendly and polite in the beginning and became rude, aggressive and used verbally abusive language in an attempt to intimidate me when I didn’t comply with his directives. Don’t trust these people. Get help from Madam Roberts ( roberts lee. 618. @. g’mail”com) if you need to withdraw your money from them. (( +1. 8 5 6 5 4 9 74 69 )) can help you out with your chargeback…….
The most disgusting thing about these scams is that they never tell their exact location so you will not be able to track them. Also the legal authorities aren’t able to trace them to get their money back thus the government.
TrueUSD has 0 followers on CoinMarketCap. They haven’t posted anything making it an inactive account, This shows they are not active, so they can’t be trusted. TrueUSD is not supported by Coinbase, which is the United States publicly traded company that operates a cryptocurrency.
No social media presence of TrueUSD makes it suspicious, it cannot be trusted as per as investing money is concerned. On various platforms like Reddit people call it a scam, due to its very low social media presence. People should abstain from investing in TrueUSD
This platform cannot be trusted, as the company is not a popular forex broker. How do they get the license to work in the countries despite knowing the fact that they are scammers? The governments around the world make stricter laws to save the investor’s money.
How can the country give a trading license to the company? Why the countries are not devising new ways to secure investors’ money? It is not a reliable platform to invest, since it has no social media presence, so this company cannot be trusted. The information written by the author is absolutely correct.
One of the reasons for the company being a fraud is that TrueUSD has not posted anything on Instagram and no one has tagged it, making it a suspicious account. This can be termed as a try that TrueUSD is trying to hide its presence.
TrueUSD cannot be trusted, it is a fake platform, and no one should their hard-earned money in this company. I agree with the author, the company is doing scams. Most of the reviews I have read are negative, this implies that TrueUSD is a scammer company.
This company is suspicious and no one should invest. I invested $1000 but I lost all my money, so no one should invest. Before investing we should be educated enough to differentiate between cryptocurrencies that whether it is genuine or a scam. TrueUSD cannot be trusted as it is not a reliable platform.
It cannot be trusted as a reliable company as it is not supported by Coinbase, it is not safe as there are many types of frauds related to cryptocurrency, the governments must take measures to stop cryptocurrency frauds.
How is TrueUSD still operating after doing many scams? Why countries are not taking strict measures to stop the scams? There must be serious measures and concerns so that no other investors get scammed due to the carelessness of the legal authorities.