Cryptocurrency DeFi100 founders deny allegations they stole $32 million from investors
No one has been able to explain where the $32 million valuation came from
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The team behind cryptocurrency DeFi100 have denied allegations that they have performed an "exit scam" after a notice on the team’s website claimed the founders had stolen $32 million in investments over the weekend.
Reports broke late Saturday evening that the lesser-known cryptocurrency DeFi100 was a "scam" after the now-removed notice went live on the website.
Twitter users passed around a screencap of the DeFi100 webpage, which read: "We scammed you guys, and you can’t do s*** about it."
Courtesy @DEFI100
Some reports put the market cap for the currency at an estimated $32 million. The method used to estimate this value has not been explained by any outlet or user.
Crypto analyst Twitter account CryptoWhale first broke the news, which instantly spread across social media and websites such as Reddit.
The project did not make any comment on social media about the message, seeming to confirm that the scam was indeed legitimate.
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However, the DeFi100 Twitter account posted a strong denial on Sunday, claiming that the website had been hacked. The group went one step further and took down the website, which continues to show an error message as of Monday afternoon.
"The website was hacked yesterday and the message was shown by the hackers," DeFi100 tweeted. "It has been taken down."
DeFi100 continued to deconstruct various reports about the scam, such as claiming that the highest market cap for the project was less than $2 million and that the project never had any investor funds.
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"Rumors of scamming for 32 million are false and baseless," the group tweeted.
Part of what made the "scam" seem realistic is how relatively young the project is, having only arrived on Twitter in December 2020, according to HITC.
Other currencies, including flagship Bitcoin and internet-famous Dogecoin, have been around for around a decade.
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A number of new cryptocurrencies have arisen over the past few years, which has made some investors wary of taking them up as many teams seek to profit from the growing bubble.
DeFi100 is built on the Binance Smart Chain, an independent blockchain which is used for development by more than 600 digital assets, including PancakeSwap, Ellipsis and others, according to News 18.
As of Monday, crypto security tracking website Certik still lists Defi100 as a certified "rug pull," a maneuver in which the founders of a project abandon it and take investor money.