Bitisis, an Iran-based crypto exchange widely reported by the Chinese media, has gone bust. Several sources indicate that the actual controller behind it comes from China. The scammers controlled several overseas exchanges that claim to be able to carry arbitrage to attract individual investors and then went bust with the investment capital.

At present, Chinese police have placed a case on file to investigate it. The exchange has transferred the user’s assets to three addresses, the related platform has frozen the relevant addresses in an emergency.

Bitisis is essentially a Ponzi scheme. It allows users to use convert their Bitcoins into the platform’s token IRRT, and then use the so-called high premium to convert into USDT. However, there are naturally many thresholds and tedious withdrawal procedures, as well as the pyramid selling mode.

Bitisis takes two main marketing methods: first, in combination with the hot geopolitical events, the exchange boasts its price premium distributed through various media to attract arbitragers. Second, in Chinese social media like Zhihu, Tieba, Douban, and Baidu(China’s largest search engine) SEO, it distributes a lot of press releases, making the search information all false information and press release.

Fortunately, the victims contacted the relevant staff of a major exchange in time, the staff analyzed the address on the chain and found that there was indeed an address transferred bitcoin to the major exchange, so the suspected address was frozen in time.

It’s sure that the scammers come from Chinese, because it is only promoted in Chinese media and community, and it is also revealed by netizens that it uses Alibaba cloud server in the early stage.

The quick-frozen of Bitisis’s address by other major exchanges shows that the technical background of these scammers is very poor. If the scammers use the coin mixer, transfer, and cash through small exchanges, it will make the tracking difficult.

It should be noted that the Bitisis’s team also has several other fraudulent websites based in other countries, such as “bit-ven.com” in Venezuela. As like as two peas of Iran-based Bitisis, the marketing model and channel of arbitrage are almost the same.

In a nutshell, any platform claim individual investors can easily arbitrage can basically be identified as fraud. In case of any loss, the victims should immediately contact police, security companies, and major exchanges to help freeze the address.