Scammers have recently managed to trick retail Chinese investors into pouring money into Bitcoin Satoshi’s Vision (BSV) over a fake publication that claimed self-proclaimed Satoshi Nakamoto proved he created the flagship cryptocurrency Bitcoin (BTC), and got BSV relisted on Binance.
Posting while masquerading as a popular Chinese news outlet Coinbull, the scammers spread an alert claiming Wright transferred 50,000 BTC from wallets belonging to Satoshi Nakamoto, proving he really is the person behind the pseudonym.
Craig Wright has been for years claiming to be Satoshi Nakamoto, although some have pointed out that to prove it all he has to do is move coins from the wallets that mined the first bitcoins. He was behind the creation of Bitcoin SV, which was created through a hard fork of Bitcoin Cash (BCH) in November of last year.
Seems someone did it purposely just around the same time BSV pumped just an hour ago.
Completely fake news but “real enough” to trick many Chinese retails pic.twitter.com/qiWtW6Z8bC
— Dovey Wan 🗝 🦖 (@DoveyWan) May 29, 2019
As a result of the transaction, they claimed leading cryptocurrency exchange Binance was set to relist Bitcoin SV and issue an apology on Twitter for delisting the cryptocurrency. As covered, the cryptocurrency exchange delisted BSV in April, after Wright offered a bounty of $5,000 for the doxing of one of his critics on social media.
According to Dovey Wan, the founding partner at Primitive Ventures, the scammers’ move worked as “all Chinese crypto media circulate the breaking news via picture as above in WeChat instead of a news link.” This, Wan added, makes using the same templates as news outlets and photoshopping in their own information.
As a result of the fake Satoshi confirmation, the price of Bitcoin SV jumped over 70% in the last 24-hour period, to hit a high of $250 before dropping slightly. Notably, the cryptocurrency also surged earlier this month after Wright filed a copyright registration claim for the Bitcoin whitepaper.
Bitcoin SV has, thanks to these pumps, seen its price rise by over 300% in the last 30 days, going from little over $50 to $224.7 at press time.
Binance’s CEO Changpeng Zhao tried to dispel the rumors on social media responding to a user who commented on the price increase. It’s worth noting that when Binance delisted BSV, exchanges like Kraken and ShapeShift followed suit.
careful, it's caused by fake new circulation in China. I got pinged 20 times today, clarifying it is fake. https://t.co/I8jIm4C2kk
— CZ Binance (@cz_binance) May 29, 2019
Coinbull itself also reacted to the scammers’ message on WeChat, writing it was aware of the “malicious photoshopped image” and reminding its users “not to trust any rumors and not to spread any rumors.”
Curiously, other bitcoin forks also saw their prices surge in the last 24-hour period, above the market’s average. Bitcoin Gold (BTG), a cryptocurrency that was hit with a 51% attack in May of last year, rose by 23%, while Bitcoin Diamond (BCD) saw its price rise 42% in the same period.
These other forks have, as covered, been threatened by a pro-Bitcoin SV mining pool called SharkPool, that planned to mine empty blocks on their blockchains to stop transactions from going through, and to sell block rewards for BSV.