Bitcoin Daily: South Korean Crypto Startup Steals $2.7M In Exit Scam; Venezuela Wants World’s Oil Market To Use Petro

Another exit scam has hit the crypto world. This time, South Korean blockchain company Pure Bit has reportedly stolen $2.7 million worth of investors’ money after raising 13,000 Ethereum in an ICO.

According to The Next Web, hours after moving all raised funds out of its wallet, the company shut down its website, deleted its social media accounts and kicked all users off its chat group.

Over the past two years, exit scammers have stolen more than $100 million worth of cryptocurrency.

In an effort to protect its residents from crypto scams, the Central Bank of the Bahamas (CBOB) has released a regulatory framework before it integrates cryptocurrency-based assets into its services.

The Nassau Guardian reported that the framework will address many of the regulatory challenges the bank associates with crypto, including tax evasion, market volatility, fraudulent initial coin offerings (ICOs), and anti-money laundering policies.

In other news, Malaysia’s Ministry of Education announced that it has formed  a new consortium of universities that will use blockchain technology to prevent the issuance of fake degree certificates. In addition, the Ministry is also launching a blockchain-based system for the issuance and verification of university degrees after a rise in fraudulent degrees being sold on the internet.

And Venezuela is trying to lure the world’s oil markets to start using its national cryptocurrency, the petro.

According to Coindesk, Manuel Quevedo, the country’s minister of petroleum and the president of state-owned oil company PDVSA, revealed that Venezuela will take petro to the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) in 2019, as the “main digital currency backed by oil.”

“Petro will become the digital currency of oil transactions worldwide; we will present it to OPEC, it is one of the internationalization measures of the currency,” Quevedo said in a news clip posted on Twitter.

Venezuela started selling petro to its residents last month through an official government portal. The government has told residents that the token must be used for anyone who would like to secure a passport.