After Plus Token collapsed, how will the users be affected?
Disclaimer: The following assumptions about PlusToken’s future developments are pure speculations based on facts. We do not offer any advice on how to tackle the PlusToken situation in this article.
Background
On June 27th, PlusToken wallet seemed to be crashed as users cannot withdraw their cryptocurrencies, such as BTC, ETH, DOGE. The amount of principle in users’ wallet ranged from US$ 500 to 10K.
When users were trying to withdraw their assets at all cost, they found out PlusToken’s app is shut down on June 29th due to alleged system maintenance. Meanwhile, there were several half-working solutions popped out from online communities while some people were voicing for PlusToken.
By July 11th, no one has been able to withdraw their cryptocurrencies from PlusToken wallet.
Assumption 1: Users will get their asset back
Overview: PlusToken could crash because rumors about PlusToken’s malfunction may cause a sell-off. In this case, people with different purposes may buyback tokens at a low price. Later, if PlusToken project comes back to life, they may gain profits from the tokens.
There are three pieces of evidence that could indicate the occurrence of a buyback.
First, by following certain instructions from PlusToken’s team, users may find out that they can still use a lot of functions on the wallet. For example, except withdrawing any cryptocurrencies from their wallet, they may transfer PlusToken to other users and deposit the asset into the wallet which accumulates interests.
Secondly, after people spread rumors of PlusToken’s malfunction, most people would like to sell-off their PlusToken. This may cause PlusToken’s price to decrease dramatically, which could lead to a larger sell-off. However, since in most cases, people would rather gain few than lose all, so they may sell PlusToken at a low price, although it is much lower than the price it used to be.
Finally, PlusToken’s team may fix its app and make the PlusToken project may come back to life.
Put it simply, PlusToken used to be 100 dollars per token, but now its price is only around 1 dollar per token. Therefore, the PlusToken team can have the chance to use the same amount of money to buyback 100 times of the token in quantity. In this case, since PlusToken pays its users interest in PlusToken Token, now PlusToken team only needs to pay interest 100 time less if the project back to life.
If PlusToken project can relaunch successfully, users may not need to beer a large amount of loss since they may keep their principle although the interest could be minimal.
Assumption 2: Users may not get their asset back and a new ponz scam is on the way
Overview: PlusToken’s team could announce that their servers have been hacked and users need to wait for further updates. Meanwhile, PlusToken’s app could work only half of the time. In the end, PlusToken may claim that users’ cryptocurrencies are lost due to a severe attack. To attract new users, PlusToken may change its operation model and relaunch its wallet.
Although it usually takes up to 24 hours to maintain and update operating systems, PlusToken has already taken two weeks to fix their servers which only works half of the time. In this case, PlusToken could use the hacker attack as a long-term excuse to counter users’ complaints about system shutdown. Furthermore, since PlusToken APP is working only half of the time, users may decide to stay with PlusToken in order to take back their principle someday in the future.
After a few months, PlusToken may able to take back some crypto assets from alleged hackers, or they may apologize to its users that those crypto assets are lost forever due to the attack.
After the incident quiets down, the original PlusToken team may create a brand-new project to attract users by offering another ludicrous interest rate.
Déjà Vu
However, the current incident of PlusToken is very similar to an existed scam called MMM.
From 2011 to 2018, MMM experienced 17 times of relaunch, with a maximum operating period of one year and a minimum operating period of one month. By estimation, the lowest amount of profit from relaunch was US$ 5 million. After every relaunch, MMM claimed that users’ previous accounts were just temporarily frozen instead of cleared, and users could have access to their account soon.
Since MMM made its users to believe they may get their money back, users did not easily give up on MMM. In the end, except original initiators of MMM, most users did not get out of MMM scam.
In conclusion, PlusToken does not really have the reason to shut down its system since its giant and deep users’ resource. By keeping the system only working half of the time, it could create false hope so that many people would hang on to PlusToken continuously. Whether the reality may follow assumption one or assumption two, PlusToken seems very likely to come back. If users are lucky, they may get their lost principle. For users who did not have PlusToken, they could consider buying Bitcoin since the market may have sudden changes after PlusToken relaunched.
