The payout interruption was expected to last a few days, but so far we haven't found any reliable information about a single person receiving their funds. It seems likely that CoinPlex, which we reported on in early June, is shutting down.
It started with a huge promotion intended to encourage CoinPlex users to deposit new funds. Deposits were doubled, cars and smartphones were given away. Then, suddenly, withdrawals were suspended. The suspension was supposed to last five days. The deadline expired last Sunday. It was later extended for another four days.
Comments have been disabled on the main CoinPlex Telegram group, which has over 20,000 members (a significant portion of whom are likely bots). The last post appeared on August 25th. “The Coinplex community giveaways are in full swing!” reads the description beneath a series of photos featuring smartphones and a Toyota C-HR.
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A day earlier, on August 24, the group posted a message about a “temporary adjustment to the withdrawal processing time” – as we read, “in connection with preparations for the CPLX token's listing on the exchange and to ensure liquidity and risk control.”
The outage, which was supposed to last 120 hours, has been extended to 216 hours. On which exchange will the CPLX token be listed, and how does its listing relate to the operation of the application?
A consultant from the CoinPlex community office in Mielec couldn't answer these questions. We spoke with him on Monday. He assured us that the withdrawals would return on Thursday or Friday. However, they haven't yet.
CoinPlex users organize themselves into groups on Telegram, WhatsApp, and Facebook. We haven't found any reliable information on any of them successfully withdrawing their funds.
The last jump?
On August 23, Coinplex announced that it would move operations to a new platform, copelx.ai, citing changes in EU regulations and claiming that it had submitted an application for a license to provide services in the cryptocurrency market to the Malta Financial Services Authority (MFSA).
A few days later, the CoinPlex app stopped working. As we reported in our July 30th article, it contained malware called “sparkkitty,” which stole data from users' galleries and transmitted it to external servers, along with device location data (it's worth noting that Polish soldiers were among CoinPlex users).
A new app has been launched in its place. Some customers have reported in groups that their antivirus programs have detected malware in this app as well. Existing CoinPlex users are also afraid to use it for another reason.
From now on, the app requires users to verify their KYC credentials, which means sending an ID, a photo, and sensitive data. Furthermore, registration will be possible after connecting a cryptocurrency wallet to the app and sending the equivalent of $199 to the specified address.
Everyone was making money
CoinPlex, which we first wrote about in June, required only two things from users: making a deposit (minimum $50 in the stablecoin USDT or USDC) and clicking a button in the app several times a day.
The “quantization” process was supposed to be triggered by the application. According to the application, the AI bot executed transactions in the cryptocurrency market and shared the profits. The daily return was in practice between 1.8% and 1.9%. The funds were reinvested, thus enabling compound interest.
If we assume that the user achieved a 1.8% return every day, from the initial $50, after a year one could get $33,644, or over PLN 126,000.
However, much greater benefits could be gained by bringing in new people. Daily returns increased with the number of users acquired by the leader. The CoinPlex Telegram group featured photos of promoters advancing to higher levels of the structure, rewarded with watches, cars, and iPhones.
USA, Poland, China
There were many warning signs regarding CoinPlex. Besides its incredibly high rate of return, pyramid structure, and disclosed malware, it was unclear who was behind the app.
CoinPlex claimed to be an American company operating since 2019, but there are no traces of its operations in the U.S. It appears to be a shell company, is not overseen by any U.S. regulatory agency, and there is no information online about the app's creators.
CoinPlex operated primarily in Poland. According to SimilarWeb data, at the time withdrawals were blocked, its website was receiving approximately 8,300 visits per month. 94% of traffic came from Poland, 5% from Germany, and 1% from France (which could also be due to Poles living abroad).
As reported by BehindMLM, a website that exposes financial frauds based on multi-level marketing, programming clues indicated that the CoinPlex application may have Chinese roots.
Generous sponsor
CoinPlex presented itself as a sponsor of the Stal Mielec handball team. While writing our first article about the app, we reached out to the club's spokesperson with questions about the matter. Despite several attempts to contact them, we received no response. According to Gazeta Wyborcza, the club terminated its partnership with the app on August 21st.
The CoinPlex community has also sponsored other local sports teams and initiatives, from swimming teams, bodybuilding teams, and the women's table tennis team at the Lublin University of Technology to the Polish Taekwon-Do Association. This year, the app was the main partner of the largest cycling event in Poland, which attracted nearly 8,000 participants.
The CoinPlex “social office” is located in the center of Mielec. Leaders organized meetings, presentations, and various events. App users drew entire families into the community. As long as everything worked and withdrawals were deposited into accounts, alarming signals were ignored.
Suspicious token
Back in June, CoinPlex began informing users that it planned to launch the CPLX token. Historically, similar schemes often involved payments being processed at a certain stage (usually the final stage) using funds created by the owners of similar apps themselves.
In such cases, instead of cryptocurrencies and stablecoins that could be exchanged for cash on virtually any platform, users began receiving a token that could take several hours to create and was traded on, at most, a handful of questionable cryptocurrency exchanges. Creators could earn money by also selling the token to community members.
Was this also the case with CPLX? As far as we know, the token was issued on the BNB blockchain, known for its low fees and ease of use. CPLX's profile appeared on CoinMarketCap, a website where you can track the prices of various cryptocurrencies, but it didn't show any trading volume or exchange rate.
This would likely change if CPLX were to debut on a cryptocurrency exchange. Such a debut was used to explain the delays in payouts for CoinPlex users. Will the app's plans be realized and will it continue operating?
Judging by the user posts that appear in their groups, few people intend to send CoinPlex a photo of their ID and an additional $199, but there will certainly be people who do – especially those who have significant amounts in their accounts in the app.
