Chinese boomers are joining crypto tapper cults, WazirX collapse worsens: Asia Express

Asia's weekly news roundup reviews the industry's most important developments.

Chinese elderly clicker game cults are homemakers.

China's online community is obsessed with cult-like cryptocurrency groups whose parents are defrauding the country's elderly, local financier Blue Whale Finance (蓝貴财经) reported.

The so-called mining applications related to the schemes are simple, even for the technically illiterate. To accumulate points, participants are asked to quickly tap phone screens and complete daily tasks such as videos and advertisements.

This concept is similar to viral Telegram clicker games like Notecoin and Hamster Kombat, although these games reward users with airdrops, or at least promise to do so.

This is not the case in Chinese elder rituals. Scammers often ask victims to pay and invite people they know to join the group. Some apps access users' documents by asking them to go through KYC verification.

A source told a local news outlet that the grandmother had invested some of her retirement savings after earning 20,000 yuan (about $2,800) at first, but since then she has not been able to withdraw anything.

The institute cited a former member of such a group as saying that the participants were brainwashed and that negative comments were met with hateful responses or community bans.

These behaviors are brought home, and children's warnings lead to arguments on the teams.

One reader said: “My aunt was exactly what was written in this article.

“They insisted that the hoax was real. They still believed the scammer when he asked her to pay a 10% deposit.

It gets even worse for WazirX.

An asset freeze for WazirX cryptocurrency is now on the table following a legal petition filed with the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT), India's court that oversees corporate disputes.

The petition, filed on August 3, has asked the NCLT to investigate possible maladministration or fraud in WazirX following the July 18 hack of $235 million.

The petition hopes the probe will investigate how the suspicious transactions on WazirX wallets happened and why the trading window was open till July 21, petitioners' lawyer Varun Rawal told the magazine.

WazirX It announced on August 8 that it would reverse all transactions on the platform after it was frozen following the July 18 hack.

Under the country's Companies Act, anyone can request the NCLT to initiate an inquiry if there are reasonable grounds to suspect fraudulent practices or malpractices.

How the court investigation is conducted, the petition may eventually lead to the freezing of the company's assets. Executors may be fined and imprisoned.

Lazar, a North Korean hacker group backed by North Korea, has been accused of carrying out cyber attacks on Indian exchanges.

Wazirx faced backlash last week for proposing a “social bankruptcy” strategy aimed at spreading the damage among its customers. The exchange has since said it is considering all options to respond to the hack.

Japan calms inflation fears, markets recover as metaplanet sinks.

Global stock and cryptocurrency markets rebounded after Bank of Japan Deputy Governor Shinichi Uchida assured the central bank that it would not raise lending rates amid market turmoil. This is only the second in 17 years following the BOJ's latest rate hike, which sent markets into turmoil and sent Bitcoin below $50,000 for the first time since February.

Ahead of Uchida's statement, the central bank had initially hinted at further rate hikes, sending the Japanese yen higher against the dollar. This has increased the cost of yen-denominated loans, commonly referred to as the yen carry trade.

In such transactions, investors borrow to convert low-interest-bearing currencies such as the US dollar into high-yielding currencies, which can then be reinvested for better returns. Major cryptocurrency companies involved in yen-denominated trades are now believed to be facing margin calls on yen loans.

Industry experts predict that Chicago-based Jump Trading and its cryptocurrency division, a major market maker in the industry, are facing significant losses. The company has divested most of its risk assets to stablecoins and is rumored to have closed its crypto business. But there is no empirical evidence to support that assessment.

On the other hand, some firms are investing heavily in the market downturn. Tokyo-based Metaplanet — often likened to “Asia Microstrategy” — announced a new shareholder loan of 1 billion yen ($6.8 million) to acquire more bitcoin. The company held 246 bitcoins on July 22.

Meanwhile, the regulatory landscape for opening up institutional funds to crypto remains chilly in Japan.

Financial Services Agency Commissioner Hideki Ito said the agency is taking a cautious stance on cryptocurrency exchange-traded funds (ETFs), echoing Singapore's approach and comparing Hong Kong's more aggressive crypto ETFs.

Do Kwon's extradition to South Korea hit another roadblock.

A panel of the Supreme Court of Montenegro has postponed the extradition of Kwon Do-Hyun (better known as Do Kwon) to South Korea, Montenegrin news outlet Vijesti reported.

Quo's extradition must now await a Supreme Court decision on legality, a process that evaluates whether a judicial decision was made on legal grounds and in accordance with the law.

The decision came after an earlier court statement indicated there was no appeal against the appeals court's decision, although the high court upheld a ruling to extradite Kwon to South Korea instead of the United States.

In the year On August 2, the Montenegrin Provincial Prosecutor's Office appealed the decision to extradite former Terraform Labs CEO Kwon Do-Hyun (better known as Do Kwon) to South Korea at the Court of Appeal.

The South Korean national has been in jail since he was caught trying to fly from Montenegro to Dubai in March 2023 on a fake passport.

In April 2024, a US court ruled that Terraform Labs and Quon were responsible for a fraud scheme that wiped $40 billion from the Terra blockchain ecosystem. Terraform Labs agreed to a $4.47 billion deal in June.

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John Yun

Yohan Yun is a multimedia journalist who has been reporting on blockchain since 2017. He has contributed as an editor to crypto media outlet Forkast and covered Asian technology stories as an assistant reporter for Bloomberg BNA and Forbes. He spends his free time cooking and experimenting with new recipes.