CryptoBike – a Non-fungible token (NFT) game or Decentralized Finance (DeFi) game – is developed by an anonymous group based on the Binance Smart Chain platform. It is a Click-to-Earn game to gain tokens. To participate, gamers have to invest a certain sum of real money to buy presents containing NFT items – bicycles. They then use these bicycles to join the game and earn tokens.

CryptoBike has so far attracted a large quantity of investors due to a high Return-on-Investment rate and quick payback. Statistics from Coinmaketcap - the world's most-referenced price-tracking website for crypto-assets – the daily trading volume of CryptoBike once reached $41.6 million.

Yet suddenly on January 1, 2022, the value of CB (CryptoBike’s token) reduced by 42 times from $0.81 to $0.019 in only a few minutes. The reason is some investors placed orders to sell 6 million CBs, worth nearly $1.4 million. CryptoBike announced that these are rewarding CBs for gamers being hacked and then sold on the market.

The Vietnamese cryptocurrency investment community is worried since they cannot identify CryptoBike’s owners but just a few project participants under the role of game developers or designers.

Similar cases to CryptoBike is not at all uncommon in Vietnam, especially when DeFi games are blooming. Statistics from the Department of Cybersecurity and Hi-tech Crime Prevention (A05) under the Public Security Ministry reveal that the number of Vietnamese users of cryptocurrency has grown significantly to reach around 1 million. They publicly carry out transactions worth billions of VND a day.

Seriously, individuals and organizations related to this special currency do not own a business permit in Vietnam thanks to the anonymity nature of virtual currencies.

The CryptoBike case signals a necessity to raise the public awareness that according to the current law in Vietnam, virtual currencies are not considered currency and are not accepted as a legal payment means in the country. Investors, therefore, should be careful and take into account their own risks doing these investment activities.

Source: Sai Gon Giai Phong

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