A blockchain project claiming to be a 'decentralized bank from the dark web' finally revealed its fangs on the 382nd day of operation — all USDT withdrawal channels were replaced with flashing 'system upgrade' prompts, and the once lucrative staking mining page now only shows a constantly ticking lockup countdown: 179 days 23 hours 59 seconds.
The end of this countdown may very well be the starting point for hundreds of thousands of investors to lose everything.
This is Aladin.
Since the locked-up volume exceeded $2 billion in March this year, the project party suddenly began a frenzied asset transfer: the top 50 holding addresses transferred out $230 million worth of cryptocurrency within 72 hours, including the core address starting with 0x9c3, which transferred 18 million USDT to a shell exchange in the Bahamas through 47 consecutive transactions.
Ironically, the reserve pool claimed to be used for 1:1 backing of stablecoins actually switched to a 'dynamic balance' mode six months ago — whenever new investors subscribe, a corresponding proportion of USDT is funneled to an offshore account in Cambodia.
The carefully designed disguises are peeling away layer by layer. Among the 137 smart contracts we've traced, 82 are directly copied and modified from the source code of PlusToken from 2019, while the remaining contracts are riddled with controllable backdoor programs.
A leaked developer document shows that the so-called 'three-time block reward' algorithm is essentially a Ponzi distribution mechanism adjusted dynamically through new deposits: when the day's deposit volume is less than 1.5 times the withdrawal demand, the system automatically reduces the yield by 30%.
This explains why daily earnings have plummeted from 1.2% to 0.3% since March, yet it still cannot stop investors from flocking in like moths to a flame.
Behind the glass curtain wall of the Dubai World Trade Center, the video of Aladin's 'Global Strategy Launch Conference' is still playing on a loop. In the footage, foreign consultants in suits talk confidently about 'disrupting traditional finance,' while over 300 empty seats in the audience expose the truth — subsequent investigations confirmed that 68% of the 'overseas institutional representatives' present that day were temporary actors hired from the local labor market, with a daily wage equivalent to 420 RMB.
This classic packaging technique from Southeast Asian capital teams, combined with forged SWIFT bank cooperation documents and photoshopped ads in Times Square, successfully convinced over 370,000 Chinese investors that they were participating in an 'international top-tier blockchain project.'
The saddest part is those morally bankrupt investors. A chat log from a retired Aladin VIP group shows that even after the platform began massive withdrawals freezing, 43% of members were still actively recruiting new users. Most of them were aware of the game rules, but each believed they would not be the last one to fall. 'Just bring in two more people to unlock withdrawals' — this phrase became the death curse of the scheme, leading countless people to voluntarily jump into a whirlpool they knew was a scam.
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