Bitcoin Platinum Is a Fraud Made by Teenager
CryptoBit News Today2 min read
Cybersecurity researchers have alleged that the Bitcoin Platinum cryptocurrency is a scam, having been created by an underage male hacker.
The claim by analysts is the latest development in a few month's worth of growing doubts over Bitcoin Platinum and its promised operation, which ironically describes itself as a revolutionary cryptocurrency focusing on transparency and security. ## Growing Concerns Over Bitcoin Platinum
Concern over the coin's authenticity started as early as this April, when a Litecoin Foundation member raised concerns on Twitter. The member shared a suspected connection between Bitcoin Platinum and DigitalCoin, a scam scheme. The same scam had been used to create other fraudulent cryptocurrencies, including another Bitcoin copycat, Bitcoin Platinum Gold, last year.
As reported by Bit News Today, these other crypto frauds had been traced back to several teenagers. Bitcoin Platinum did not respond to this April allegation on its Blockchain Twitter account. It merely asked the Litecoin Foundation member for proof.
The user claimed that the team asked for his bank account and credit card information.
The user then discovered that the Bitcoin Platinum website codebase had been copied from a premium website template maker, instead of being built from scratch. To add to that, the website contained suspicious lines of Javascript code.
After this revelation, Bitcoin Platinum issued a statement that a member of its team had 'negligently' copied the code.
The team assured that it would have a better system in place by the Beta release. However, this has not yet happened. Bitcoin Platinum has only released a Beta app and a whitepaper, and not a full-fledged coin with a working blockchain. ## A Reckless Teenager
Now, according to cybersecurity experts, the case of the Bitcoin Platinum scam goes back to a teenager in Europe, who seems to have compromised several exchanges over the past two years. The hacker is said to use an alias name of "Phantom programmer".
In response, the researcher who noticed the exploit had alerted the exchanges. However, Phantom then seemed to have made changes to the exploit, but without changing the fundamental algorithm.
This meant that the hacker could still access the exchanges using the same exploit, while several exchanges failed to upgrade their security accordingly.
To date, the exchanges that have been compromised include CoinDesk and Bitfinex.
In its entirety, the compromise seems to have illegally given Phantom an amount exceeding Bitcoin Platinun's market cap, of a few million dollars. Phantom has used some of this money to fund the Bitcoin Platinum project.
The researcher says it is unclear if Phantom is acting alone or has help from other people. An unnamed source told the research's employer, Crowdstrike, that they might have found a link between the hacker and Bitcoin Platinum.
This is through a peculiar tweet by Bitcoin Platinum's account trying to find a writer in the Chinese language, with an attached nugget of code that looks the same as the one allegedly used by Phantom.
