The Vietnamese blockchain landscape is boiling in the scandal around the national TV station and the well-known Singapore-registered cryptocurrency company MinePlex.
On March 9 2023, VTV Channel published a news piece that accused MinePlex of being a Ponzi scheme with no implemented products titled “The electronic bank self-proclaimed as MinePlex operates illegally”. MinePlex answered with an official letter with an invitation to work with the company and its lawyer “to resolve the case of the above-mentioned article”.
Earlier this year, the very same MinePlex was named among 3 main blockchain projects of 2023 by Nasdaq journalists. The general media coverage seems positive as well: the project was mentioned among top blockchain companies by International Business Times, Seeking Alpha, and other media outlets. The reputation was impeccable. But it did not help.
Blockchain projects regularly face difficulties in protecting their reputation. Of course, there are projects in the blockchain scene that have no real product, there are tokens with no real utility value and there are claims that are not grounded. And the blockchain field suffers from the aftershock of such projects’ failures.
Even in their letter to VTV, MinePlex shared that they hold conferences and seminars to talk “about security and call for improving financial literacy”. But what should a project do if journalists do not just check the publicly available information or just go against the facts?
Before accusing a company of illegal activities in Vietnam, the journalists could have examined the company’s registration in Singapore (registration number 202025952D). Also, the project team has successfully passed the KYC check of the international company CertiK.
Before calling MinePlex “a self-proclaimed bank”, VTV could have checked the MinePlex communications that clearly state that the project does not own the banking licence but operates in partnership with traditional banks. At the beginning of 2023, MinePlex announced a strategic partnership with a major Brazilian bank.
Before suggesting that MinePlex could be a Ponzi scheme, they could have scanned the project’s whitepaper and tried the products in the ecosystem. MinePlex representatives shared that the uniqueness of the technology has already gained recognition:
“Already 2.5 years ago, the MinePlex technology was recognized as unique in the world media. The MinePlex blockchain is based on the work of two tokens. One mines the other. This is written in a mathematical algorithm and the company cannot interrupt this process in any way”
Finally, instead of cutting the quote out of context from the project’s CFO speech, they could have presented the whole context where Fyodor Bogorodsky clearly states that the company does not offer any guarantees or promises. How could it actually be otherwise in a speech of a banking expert with over 20 years of experience?
Of course, VTV journalists could have done all that but who would want to watch another story about a blockchain project that works just fine? Was it a sacrifice for hype or just a lack of professional ethics?
The MinePlex management in their letter to the VTV channel asked to work with the company and its lawyer, to clarify the content in regards to stated accusations “that may cause confusion” or affect the “honor and reputation” of the blockchain project.
What the news outlet will do is yet to know but one thing is clear: blockchain projects started to get tired of getting their reputation ruined on the base of groundless accusations.
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