The Central Bank of Russia has revealed a new type of financial pyramids using cryptocurrencies – Bits Media

The Central Bank of Russia has revealed a new type of financial pyramids, operating on the principle of online investment games, To pay for participation in which cryptocurrencies and electronic wallets are most often used.

To date, the share of such projects is 8% of the total identified financial pyramids. Some of them are just gaining popularity. Глава департамента противодействия недобросовестным практикам Банка России Валерий Лях сказал:

«Обычно пользователи регистрируются в таком игровом проекте, then they buy characters or, eg, virtual real estate. All this should generate income. Just for this, to get a reward, it is necessary to bring new players into the project - as a rule, acquaintances or relatives".

The work of such games is based on the principle of network marketing, it is also used in financial pyramids. According to Lyakh, if there are no new players, the project stops, and the participant cannot withdraw his money, because someone has already done it.

Money to pay for participation is credited through your personal account using various payment services, electronic wallets and cryptocurrencies. Besides, the user agreements on such sites usually indicate, that there are no guarantees of a refund - this is written in small letters at the bottom of the document.

Amid growing interest in digital assets, primarily to NFTs,  a large number of platforms appear, which the Central Bank regards as financial pyramids. According to the managing partner of the law firm “Ickert and Partners” Pavel Ickert, many of them are.

According to him, scammers are building gaming pyramids based on one of the first NFT games - CryptoKitties. This is an online game on the Ethereum blockchain, developed by Dapper Labs, where do players buy, sell and breed virtual cats. Each of them has a unique digital certificate, and the approximate cost of such a cat varies from $250 up to millions of dollars.