QUADRIGA INITIATIVE
CRYPTO WATCHDOG & FRAUD RECOVERY PLATFORM
A COMMUNITY-BASED, NOT-FOR-PROFIT
$20 000 000 USD
SEPTEMBER 2020
GLOBAL
YFDEXF
DESCRIPTION OF EVENTS

The "DeFi project Yfdexf.Finance" was a "new liquidity mining pool DeFi project". "YFDEX promoted themselves on Medium and other websites for two days, after launching on Sept 8 and describing itself as “a powerful player of industry (sic) that breaks down all barriers.”"
"To attract investment in crypto-currency in its protocol, the cash pool project conducted advertising campaigns. Yfdexf.Finance was thus able to make itself known to potential investors on Twitter and Telegram." "Yfdexf.Finance, ran an advertising campaign on various social media platforms including Twitter and Telegram for two days to convince people to put money in the project." "During the two-day advertisement, the new liquidity mining pool promised giveaways to Twitter users for retweets and hashtags."
"YFDEX is the FIRST and LEGIT protocol to get rewarded on your TrippleStaking," said the ad campaign posted on Telegram. "Many were lured to new DeFi tokens after seeing the increase in value of other DeFi tokens like YFI." "Many investors rushed to leverage their funds on the new yield farming protocol in line with a trend that’s been prevalent in the second half of 2020, despite multiple warnings from investors and financial advisors." "[T]he project reportedly noted that the pre-sale was to last only four hours “until the hard cap is reached… [and any] unsold tokens would be burned immediately.”"
"What happened here is also another reminder to all a[ir]drop and giveaway hunters out there to be careful in what you are sharing in exchange for some rewards. You might not realized it yet, but you are also helping these scammers. Yfdexf’s team organized many giveaways to create hype and many of these hunters just joined without even thinking about what they are promoting."
"Binance, as the fastest global exchange to list yield farming protocol tokens, has been in the spotlight for allegedly boosting the credibility of scam tokens with their listings. CEO Changpeng Zhao however, defended the exchange’s position, stating that investors have a responsibility to do their own research before investing in a DeFi token."
"Over 200 transactions of the token took place on decentralized exchange protocol, Uniswap with the price of the transactions increasing to as high as 0.1ETH ($36.06 per token) at some point. The last recorded transaction swapped 10 YFDEX tokens for just 0.002ETH ($0.73), showing how quickly the price has plummeted in the last 48 hours." "After a two-day campaign, the organizers of disappeared from $ 20 million in user funds." "Yfdexf's official website and its tweets were erased." "[I]ts official website, Medium story, Twitter, and Telegram accounts that were used to lure investors have since been deleted." "There were attempts made to track down its cover up efforts but it had cautiously deleted crucial details that would expose it." "[S]ome 49 addresses hold the now “worthless” YFDEX."
YFDexF was one platform which you could have afforded to miss out on. After advertising extensively on social media with free give-aways for retweets and hash tags, the project then disappeared with investor funds.
HOW COULD THIS HAVE BEEN PREVENTED?
One of the challenges with platforms created by unknown individuals is that they typically cannot be held to account. Funds stored with access by a single person, especially an unknown individual, are generally the worst place to put your money.
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