Bitcoin Daily: FCoin Shuts After $130M Shortfall; Scam Threatens Via Google Ads

FCoin has stopped all trading and withdrawal after it was revealed that the crypto exchange had a shortage of $130 million worth in crypto assets, CoinDesk reported Monday (Feb. 17).

Zhang Jian, who launched FCoin, wrote a post about the issue Monday, explaining that the assets reserves have fallen below the liability, so the exchange is not able to process users’ withdrawal demands.

Because of this, users of what was at one point a massive trading exchange based on the volume of users were in for a shock. Zhang said the problem was, essentially, that internal system errors had made it so users ended up with more transaction-based rewards than they should’ve had.

FCoin is a new type of crypto exchange based around a controversial “trans-fee mining” model. The model consisted of FCoin launching 51 percent of a coin to the public in exchange for making transactions, rather than doing an initial offering or an airdrop.

They would also distribute 80 percent of the fees it collected in bitcoin and ether to users who held FTs bitcoin all throughout the day.

Meanwhile, an email-based scam is promising to stop a barrage of junk and spam ads from flooding a publisher’s Google account if the publisher pays up in bitcoin, KrebonSecurity reported Monday.

The scam says that, unless the bitcoin is paid out, the fraudsters would flood a publisher with so much bot and junk traffic that Google’s sensors would pin the publisher as suspicious traffic and suspend the account.

A copy of a typical fraud message of this kind promises that the scenario is a “nightmare” for any AdSense publisher, saying that the “sophisticated” bots will open ads in an endless cycle, according to published reports.

The message demands $5,000 worth in bitcoin to ward off the threatened attack.

According to experts, the scammers were likely betting that publishers would find it more cost-effective to pay up rather than potentially see their entire ad revenue go haywire with a suspension.

One reader who shared the email said it was likely a baseless threat, but a review of the reader’s AdSense traffic revealed that it had spiked exponentially around the time of the email.

With the proliferation of cryptocurrency, more crime has also arisen, with a $4 billion price tag on crimes involving cryptocurrency in 2019.