HONG KONG BITCOIN EXCHANGE MYCOIN ‘LOST’ $387 MILLION OF CUSTOMERS’ MONEY

Reports out of Hong Kong indicate that the MyCoin Exchange has just closed, locking out more than three thousand large investors. The closure has occurred almost one year to the day after the world’s largest Bitcoin exchange, Mt. Gox, closed off all exchange withdrawals on February 7th, 2014. That took almost 750,000 investor’s Bitcoins with it, plus 100k of the exchange’s cache. This sudden exchange closure has a potential combined value of three billion Hong Kong Dollars, which is equivalent to about $387 Million USD.
MyCoin happens almost exactly one year after Mt. Gox
The investors affected would file reports on Wednesday with authorities in Hong Kong because deception was involved in a pyramid-style Ponzi scheme perpetuate by the exchange owners, packaged and sold as a bitcoin trading exchange.
The HK$3 billion figure is based on an earlier statement by the company that it had 3,000 clients in Hong Kong, each investing an average HK$1 million.
‘No one seems to know who is behind this,’ said Ms. Lau, an investor who claims she saw her HK$1.3 million investment, about $167k in USD, evaporate within four MyCoin contracts. ‘Everyone says they too are victims. We were told by those at higher tiers [of the scheme] that we can get our money back if we find more new clients.’

This post was published at Crypto Coins News on February 10, 2015.