Singapore-registered cryptocurrency company MinePlex has announced its intention to take legal action against VTV Channel for attempting to damage yet another blockchain project’s reputation. The company has contacted a law firm and sent an official letter demanding the issuance of a rebuttal to the false allegations presented by VTV Channel on March 9, 2023.

The story began when VTV Channel published a video and an article on its website titled “The electronic bank self-proclaimed as MinePlex operates illegally,” which blamed MinePlex for conducting illegal activities and seducing participants to join what journalists presented as a Ponzi scheme. 

MinePlex’s letter stated that the company “has full legal bases and operating conditions” and is registered in Singapore as MINEPLEX PTE. LTD. under the registration number 202025952D. The transparency of the company’s operations can also be demonstrated by the successful pass of the KYC team checks from the international company CertiK.

MinePlex insists that it never claimed to be a traditional bank, and since the project was launched, the company informed customers that they partner with traditional banks to offer financial-related services such as payment cards to their customers. For example, on February 25, MinePlex announced a strategic partnership with a major Brazilian bank and clearly stated that MinePlex users would gain access to the services provided by the bank.

In the letter to VTV, the company explained that MinePlex did not promise profits. They point out the journalist’s trick of taking phrases out of context, which sadly became quite frequent. During the interview, Fyodor Bogorodsky, the MinePlex CFO, mentioned the possible growth of the PLEX token to $1,500, but the context of the conversation clearly demonstrated that it was not and could not be a promise to investors or users.

MinePlex took accusations of being a Ponzi scheme very seriously. The pyramid structure assumes a lack of product, but MinePlex has already launched the whole ecosystem. Since its launch in 2020, all technical documentation detailing how MinePlex products work has been published on GitHub and the company’s official web. The MinePlex blockchain is based on the work of two tokens, one of which mines the other. This is written in a mathematical algorithm, and the company cannot interrupt this process in any way.

The MinePlex case happened despite the general media acceptance of the project. Nasdaq put MinePlex on the list of top projects this year. Earlier, the project received high rankings among blockchain projects by International Business Times, Seeking Alpha, and other media outlets.

MinePlex management expressed their disappointment that VTV Channel “neglected the basic principles of journalism and did not verify and clarify the content before publishing” and requested that the channel issue clarification to readers.

While it is still too early to draw conclusions about the case, one thing becomes clear: in the beginning, blockchain projects were in the legal grey zone, and many took advantage of that. Projects operating in new fields such as blockchain are frequently exposed to debatable practices in journalism, and as the blockchain market matures, potential defamation cases are more likely to arise in response to such practices. Now, the blockchain market has matured to the point where it is ready to act using traditional and legal instruments to safeguard its reputations.