North Korea scam coin fundraising with a Singapore marine industry collaborator—Recorded Future report
Circumventing Sanctions Through Government Technological Aid
To bypass the impact of economic sanctions imposed on the United States, the Kim Jong Un regime's use of cryptocurrency has been reported repeatedly. Earlier this month, North Korea’s hacker group "Lazarus" was reported to have been involved in theft of more than $571 million in cryptocurrency since 2017. Lazarus has also been pointed out as involved in the 2018 Coincheck hack.
A report from Recorded Future states, "Bitcoin and Monero mining by North Korean leaders is relatively small in scale. On the other hand, from Q1 2018, the focus has shifted to launching scam coins." The two representative North Korean fraudulent ventures are HOLD Coin and Marine Chain.
HOLD Coin built a sophisticated staking scheme to gather investors’ funds. It was actually listed on many exchanges before being discontinued.
Meanwhile, Marine Chain is the token of the blockchain application "Marine Chain Platform." According to Bitcoin Forum, it is claimed to be backed by assets of vessel owners enabling the tokenization of maritime ships.
Note that the text focuses more on the network connected to Singapore, formed behind the scenes, than on the token fundraising itself as described by Recorded Future.
