Cryptoland

Mark Honeychurch - 17 January 2022

I’m not a fan of cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin, the original and most “successful” of them, has not followed its creator’s vision of being a decentralised currency that allows people to make payments to each other without having to go through traditional banking systems. Rather, instead of Bitcoin being used as a digital currency for purchasing online, people are using it as an investment, speculating on its price and hoping for “massive gains”. This is evidenced by both its high price per coin and its volatility. Hardly any Bitcoin transactions are actually involved in buying or selling goods, and the high price of Bitcoin these days means that the Proof of Work idea for securing the Blockchain (the shared list of transactions that records all transfers of Bitcoin) ends up using over 1,000kwh of electricity for each transaction. The promised decentralisation of Bitcoin is also mostly a myth these days. What Bitcoin has become is a way for greedy people to make money from other greedy people. Its creator, the enigmatic “Satoshi”, is probably despairing of what happened to his creation - if he’s still alive.

Of the many cryptocurrencies that have been created after Bitcoin, all have their serious flaws - and many are straight out scams. There are countless stories of rug pulls (currencies that people buy into, just to have the creators walk away with all the money), millions of stolen coins from badly secured exchanges, and cryptocurrencies that don’t even exist, where people are sold a lie.

So, when I heard about a new Cryptocurrency and NFT (Non-Fungible Token - don’t get me started!) called Cryptoland, where your investment in the cryptocurrency could buy you a holiday home on an exclusive cryptocurrency themed private island, I was intrigued. Does this place already exist? Is this a great idea needing investment? Or is this just another scam?

My first stop was a video that the project released - a cringeworthy 10 minutes of animation where the names of cryptocurrencies and buzzwords were dropped liberally:

The basic plan for now is that people can buy Cryptoland NFTs - an NFT is a piece of data (in this case an image) where a record is made in a blockchain that you are the “owner” of that data. In this instance there are 10,000 images that are variations of the Cryptoland mascot, Connie, who is a garish looking gold coin with arms, legs and a face. One NFT might have Connie wearing a pink baseball cap and green sunglasses. Another could have him wearing a white ski jacket and ear muffs. Sixty special NFTs, each sold for around $1 million US, come with the promise of a plot of land on the island of Cryptoland.

The video immediately made me suspicious that at the very least the creators of this project had absolutely no clue what they were doing. A second video included the creators of the project discussing the island’s plans, and included an image of a map with the name Nananu-i-cake. A quick search of that name reveals a Fijian island currently up for sale for US$12 million. So, the island hasn’t been purchased yet - and it appears the project’s plan is to somehow raise money through their cryptocurrency to make the purchase - although they say that the money from NFTs won’t be used for this.

After watching several critical videos, skimming through the Cryptoland whitepaper, reading the online chat (in their Discord channel) and digesting a few blog posts, a bunch of red flags became apparent:

• In order to be able to participate in this “opportunity”, members first have to earn credits through posting on social media, with tasks such as changing your profile image to a Cryptoland images, adding links to the Cryptoland website to your bio, and writing posts about how amazing Cryptoland is. This is an obvious ploy to generate a fake “buzz” around the new cryptocurrency, making it seem like people are choosing to promote the project when in reality they have to sound positive just to take part.

• The Discord channel for the project, where participants chat with the creators, is locked down to prevent any negative talk about the project, including the banning of posting links to external websites.

• The island is supposed to have a casino, despite the fact that Fiji doesn’t allow gambling.

• The project’s Spanish creators, Max Olivier and Helena Lopez, have a history of running failed projects where they have misrepresented themselves to others. There’s not much online about them, but there is an article (in Spanish) about Max titled “The man all Spanish YouTubers hate”.

• At least one listed project member has been contacted and responded that they are not connected to the project - suggesting that the Cryptoland website’s Team list is at least in part a fabrication.

• US citizens are not allowed to buy this currency; presumably this is an attempt to avoid prosecution in the US when everything goes wrong.

• So far there has been one purchase of a plot of land, from a dubious cryptocurrency speculator who made his money early on in the life of Bitcoin - Kyle Chasse. He appears to have been given the opportunity at a 50% reduction in price, something the creators of this project have tried to hide within the Ethereum blockchain. He’s also a US citizen, which should preclude him from being able to make the purchase.

• Molly White, a software engineer, has been doing some great work dissecting Cryptoland and the people behind it, and documenting it all on Twitter. Molly received a Cease and Desist letter (or Cease and Decease, according to Cryptoland’s accidental typo in a Tweet), asking her to delete all of her false statements.

This last red flag is worth looking into, as Molly’s response to it is priceless. The email sent to Molly said:

“Dear Ms. White,

It has come to our attention that you have been making statements about Cryptoland that are both false and misleading. These statements constitute libel since they defame both Cryptoland and its founders.

We demand you immediately cease and desist making these false and libellous statements, delete them from any platform and issue a public apology on all platforms where the libellous statements have been placed.

Please be advised that, if you fail to fulfil the petition above, we will have no choice but to take the appropriate legal steps to protect Cryptoland’s reputation, including seeking relief in a court of law for monetary damages.

Sincerely,

Cryptoland Legal Team”

Molly responded with:

“Dear Legal Team,

I have removed all of the false statements.

Sincerely,

Molly White”

Of course, Molly has deleted absolutely nothing that she wrote about Cryptoland, as none of her tweets about this project are factually wrong. Good on her for standing up to them!

Having spent far too long reading up on this project, I’m happy to call a spade a spade. Cryptoland is a scam, and anyone who invests in it is likely to lose their money. If, by some miracle, the masterminds behind this project end up creating the island of Cryptoland, my bet is that it will not be paradise. Instead it will be a depressing hell-hole where everyone is looking out for themselves - so maybe it will be a fitting monument to the modern day cryptocurrency movement after all.