Fraudsters inflate Bitcoin price to sell Bitcoin Inc. shares

Fraudsters offer Bitcoin Inc. shares worth $210 million.

The organizers of a new fraud scheme offered users the opportunity to purchase corporate shares of a company called Bitcoin Inc., valued at $210 million.

The maximum cap for full Bitcoin Inc. corporate shares is allegedly 1,000 units. The scammers claim that after Bitcoin reaches a price of $21,000, the value of a Bitcoin Inc. share would rise to $210,000. In reality, Bitcoin has not climbed above $19,500 on most exchanges this year.

The shares trade under the ticker USDCX. All 210 million tokens were issued 17 days ago and are held on a smart contract named ‘BITCOIN INC. USDCX’.

To participate in the sale, investors are invited to purchase the stablecoin USDC and transfer it to the specified address. So far the scammers have received one transfer of 110 USDC, which was likely sent by themselves to lend credibility to the scheme.

Public information indicates that the Bitcoin Inc. organization, founded in 2010 in the United States, was “created to promote Bitcoin and blockchain-based commodity exchange systems among the general public and the private sector”.

The organization’s site links to the real domain bitcoin.org, registered in 2008 before Bitcoin’s launch. It also contains a donation form for Bitcoin Inc. via Coinbase and a Bitcoin purchase through the same exchange.

The U.S. corporate registry lists several companies named Bitcoin Inc., but the organization in question was most likely registered in Ohio in 2019. The Bitcoin Inc. site domain changed ownership in 2020.

In July, the Centre Consortium first added an Ethereum account holder with $100,000 in USDC to the blacklist at the request of law enforcement.

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