Cryptocurrency project related to Shark Binh is under investigation: Reason for assets "evaporating" 99%

(Dan Tri) - Shark Binh has recently been constantly attracting attention because of the noise related to the AntEx cryptocurrency project. Immediately after its launch, this currency "evaporated" 99% of its value and was accused by investors of showing signs of "carpet withdrawal" and "token dumping".

Token price crash, chart redrawn

On the afternoon of October 6, at the press conference of the Ministry of Public Security, a representative of the Hanoi Police Department provided information related to the AntEx virtual currency project of Mr. Nguyen Hoa Binh (commonly known as Shark Binh).

Colonel Nguyen Duc Long, Deputy Director of Hanoi City Police, said that recently, on social networks and some press agencies, information appeared about many people losing money when participating in the AntEx virtual currency project.

At the same time, there were also accusations back and forth between Mr. Nguyen Hoa Binh and the group developing this virtual currency, attracting attention on social networks.

In response to the above information, the Ministry of Public Security’s Investigation Agency and Hanoi City Police have launched an investigation. Initially, the investigation agency received a complaint from an individual, with the amount of money embezzled being approximately 2,000 USD.

Speaking at the Go Global 2025 Conference in September, Mr. Nguyen Hoa Binh, Chairman of NextTech Group, talked about the AntEX cryptocurrency project and received many mixed opinions. AntEX is associated with the name of shark Binh and left many scandals after going public.

Launched in September 2021, AntEx attracted attention when Shark Binh announced an investment of 2.5 million USD through the Next100Blockchain fund. On the project's homepage at that time, Mr. Binh was introduced as a strategic advisor, along with several other leaders of NextTech Group.

At that time, Mr. Binh had many compliments for AntEx. The project was described as a comprehensive DeFi (decentralized finance) ecosystem, building a stablecoin VNDT "anchored" to the Vietnamese Dong.

Specifically, stablecoins are digital currencies designed to keep their prices stable, similar to “anchoring” traditional assets. Stablecoins are often tied to a reference value to avoid too much volatility.

However, immediately after listing on exchanges, AntEx lost 99% of its value.

At that time, there was a wave of anger from investors, accusing AntEx of showing signs of "pulling the rug". Shark Binh on livestream still defended the project, believing AntEx would go the long way. The announcement of "chicken chasing" - the term Mr. Binh used to refer to those who accused AntEx of "pumping and dumping" - had attracted a lot of attention at that time.

After that, AntEx had almost no more activities. Shark Binh also kept quiet, stopped mentioning the project since the end of 2021. In March 2023, AntEx suddenly announced a name change to Rabbit. Antex token holders will switch to Rabbit at a rate of 1,000 AntEx for 1 Rabbit.

In the cryptocurrency world, this move is considered a "redrawing of the chart", to erase the history of a severe price decline. However, Rabbit also quickly lost value, plummeting on the market, with its exchange value almost zero.

Once again, shark Binh was called by investors, however on Rabbit's homepage, related information gradually disappeared.

Mr. Nguyen Hoa Binh (Photo: TVHUB).

"Pull out the carpet", "pump and drain"

After 4 years of silence, Mr. Binh recently commented on AntEx. He warned about the risks of investing in startups that raise capital through coin issuance. He said that 99% of these projects fail, causing investors to lose money.

Mr. Binh stated that he had previously invested in the AntEx digital asset issuance project. However, the technology team had “pulled the rug” and disappeared, causing investors and advisors like him to be discredited.

Shark Binh believes that he has the responsibility to share his experience to alert the community, to avoid failure, loss of money, and reputation damage like he did.

He advised businesses, especially small and medium enterprises (SMEs), not to focus on fintech, blockchain and coins. He also said that businesses need to be alert and should only participate when there is real value, instead of rushing into issuing tokens to "raise capital before doing anything".

However, the recipient, the CTO (technical director) of the AntEx project, counter-accused, saying that Mr. Binh was the one who directed the "token dumping" right after the project peaked to take advantage of liquidity. This account also publicly disclosed wallet addresses believed to be related to Mr. Nguyen Hoa Binh, calling on the community to retrieve transaction history.

The term “rug pull” refers to a cryptocurrency development team abruptly abandoning a project and taking all of the investors’ money with them.

According to experts, the ease of creating new tokens on the blockchain and then listing them on decentralized exchanges (DEX) is a loophole for groups to exploit and carry out this scam.

The term "pump and dump" is often used to refer to a group of people buying a large amount of virtual currency from a project that is currently undervalued, combined with media promotion to create a fear of missing out (FOMO).

This mentality causes many others to buy in, thereby causing the price of that coin to skyrocket. At a certain point, the initial group of buyers will sell all the tokens they hold, making a profit while also causing the price of the token to plummet. At that time, the later buyers will become victims when their own coins lose value.

Many cryptocurrency players in Vietnam have recently become victims of the "pump and dump" and "rubber pull" tricks. When the cryptocurrency trend flourished, many projects sprung up, using this trick to lure users to buy tokens. However, the people behind the project then sold all of the tokens, causing the token price to even drop to 0, causing players to lose everything.

According to the FBI report, in 2024 there were nearly 150,000 complaints related to virtual currency, total losses reached 9.3 billion USD, an increase of 66% compared to 2023. In just 3 years 2022-2024, losses increased more than 5 times, the number of cases increased nearly 3 times.

Considering the scale of global blockchain crime in 2024-2025, according to Chainalysis, in 2024, $2.2 billion in digital assets were stolen. Frauds are not decreasing, even shifting from extremely large cases to targeting retail investors.

Source: https://dantri.com.vn/kinh-doanh/du-an-tien-ao-lien-quan-shark-binh-bi-dieu-tra-ly-do-tai-san-boc-hoi-99-20251007004413536.htm