With the rapid technological development during economic difficulties, few investment channels bring high profits, plus due to the psychology of making money quickly, many people are tending to look towards the foreign exchange market (FOREX) to "dig" and buy and sell virtual money without knowing that this space is full of traps and tricks. Authorities have warned, but the legal sanctions are not sufficient, the experience and knowledge of finance of the people are not high, so it is easy to "fall into the trap".

A forex advertisement.

Searching on Google or Facebook with the keyword "forex" or "virtual currency" the searcher will receive hundreds of thousands of results, including thousands of offers to participate in investment, buying and selling. True or fake, gain or loss for many people are no longer preoccupied with the promises of huge profit.

Overwhelmed by offers

Forex is a currency trading market also known as forex trading. A commodity of forex is money when investors buy one amount of money and sell another amount of money at the same time. Investors will have to predict the uptrend or decrease to buy and sell a currency and make a profit. In many countries, this transaction is legal and tends to be the most liquid asset market. In Vietnam, the forex floor has not been licensed to do business but is very interested, when these floors offer advertisements such as high interest rates and large commissions to help create "huge" income for players.

In the role of a person wishing to invest and trade on the forex floor, a reporter searched for information of forex brokers on Facebook. Immediately, he received a series of offers with profits up to 20-25% per month and attractive commissions, along with advertisements it would "change your life" thanks to the forex floor. According to the introduction of a broker and also a trader, when trading on the L.G floor, players can profit by up to 0.8% per day (about 22% per month) without having to do anything. Players just create an account and experts of the trading floor will help them. This income is traded by the group on the L.G. and is called passive income.

Learning more about the L.G floor, according to information gleaned from hashtags that traders left on Facebook, the reporter was overwhelmed by the pictures of parties, buying houses, buying a car and screenshots of bank transactions worth up to tens or hundreds of millions VND posted by members of this floor. Along with these images, the members made calls to work with enthusiastic words of encouragement, for example: “60,000 investors still have a stable income of 20-23% per month for the past 20 months and will forever like that!”

In fact, the model of L.G is a mix of multi-level practice of forex and virtual currency, trading via binary options (a form of financial gambling). By agreeing to be a member, investors will get an account to deposit and withdraw with a minimum deposit of US$1,000 and a Forex account on Fxtradingmarkets. Then, investors just need to sit and get benefits and the floor's experts will help with the commitment to bring a steady return of more than 20% per month.

Similarly, another Forex investor with a huge profit shared, L.B. introduced as an international financial company, operating in forex and virtual currency with Libfx listed on five major exchanges of the world, so he joined with a commitment to profit from the referrer of 8-16% per month depending on the profit package and the interest is withdrawn daily in Libfx.

Cryptocurrency transactions are of interest many people, even though
they are not protected by the law.

Waiting make you happy or not?

Since the beginning of the year, the crypto/blockchain community has been constantly buzzing about installing applications to dig Pi through the network and an application called Pi Network. Therefore, on many social networks such as Facebook, Zalo, TikTok, Telegram and YouTube, there are many invitations to dig Pi in the hope of an opportunity to "turn stones into gold". The authenticity of the Pi Network is still a big question while the value of Pi is zero, so this is a matter that is being disputed by the community as well as technology experts. There are many signs of questioning, but there are also many justifications that seem "ridiculous but very convincing" to show that Pi can be a valuable currency after being listed, such as, a Pi miner does not lose anything, just install an application on the phone to dig Pi.

The story of Pi or a virtual currency or digital money but has a similar way of operation as people participating in the forex floor mentioned above. That is a passive mindset, want to get rich quickly but do not want to invest too much effort and money. Moreover, people are "dazzled" by the offers and the spectacular "show off" of the brokerage groups, so they are willing to participate, they only stop when losing money and suffering damage.

Especially, with virtual currency or digital money, the skyrocketing momentum of some currencies like Bitcoin, Ethereum, Binance Coin and Cardano all made investors "overwhelmed". Since then, the Pi mining community has the hope that one day Pi will be listed and become a valuable digital currency. Thus, time will be the answer for the question “will waiting make you happy or not?”

Mainly calling for illegal investment

The State Securities Commission regularly coordinated with the police agencies on cases related to exchanges, virtual currencies and securities of a similar nature that occurred in many provinces and cities across the country. The State Securities Commission said (according to information provided by the police), in general, these exchanges have some similar characteristics, mainly calling for illegal investment by many domestic and foreign individuals and organisations (with unidentified legal status), attracting investors to invest in many forms (buying and selling international securities, digital currencies, binary option trading in the form of predicting the value of an asset (be it virtual currency, gold, stocks, stocks, exchange rate).

Currently, Vietnam lacks legal regulations governing the issuance, trading, and exchange of virtual money and virtual assets. At the same time, there is no official agency to manage the issuance and trading of virtual currencies and virtual assets. The Ministry of Finance has set up a research group on virtual assets and virtual currencies to research and propose policies and management mechanisms for the sector.

(Recorded by Chi Mai)