ArabianChain Technology, the company behind Dubaicoin, claims to be the first public blockchain in the region, allowing users to mine the currency, and maintain the blockchain ledgers.
DUBAI – The price of Dubaicoin (DBIX), a newly launched cryptocurrency based on the public blockchain, reportedly shot up by 1,000 per cent within 24 hours after falsely claiming to be the official cryptocurrency for the city of Dubai. ArabianChain Technology, the company behind Dubaicoin, claims to be the first public blockchain in the region, allowing users to mine the currency, and maintain the blockchain ledgers.
Dubaicoin was listed on a number of trading platforms, including CoinMarketCap, with an initial price of $0.17. However, the price of Dubaicoin rose to $1.13 on Thursday after a press release said that the cryptocurrency will soon be used to pay for a range of goods and services, placing it as an alternative to traditional bank-backed currencies.
“Circulation of the new digital currency will be controlled by both the city itself and authorized brokers,” the release added.
As the claims seemed to convince many, the government of Dubai dismissed it as an elaborate phishing campaign designed to steal personal information. Taking to Twitter, the media office of the Dubai government said that Dubaicoin cryptocurrency was never approved by any official authority.
“The website promoting the coin is an elaborate phishing campaign that is designed to steal personal information from its visitors,” it added.
According to a Khaleej Times report, the Dubai Electronic Security Centre announced late Thursday night that the website promoting the Dubaicoin is an unlicensed site that aims to steal email, passwords and phone numbers through an electronic form.
Following the Dubai government’s clarification, the ArabianChain Technology tweeted, “We haven’t made such an announcement, please be cautious. Also this website, dub-pay.com/en/ is fake and [a] scam. Please be careful.” The DubPay website is not accessible anymore and the officials are investigating the matter, per Khaleej Times.
Dubaicoin has now disappeared from the CoinMarketCap listings and is unavailable for trading on any major crypto exchanges.
ArabianChain Technology, on its website, says that it is an open-source, community-based project with the goal of building a decentralised, consensus-driven, peer to peer, open-source, blockchain-based platform for distributed applications, including but not limited to cryptocurrencies. “Rather than giving users a set of predefined instructions (like bitcoin), ArabianChain allows users to create with ease their own instructions of any complexity they wish,” the website reads.
