State-controlled media outlet China Central Television subsidiary CCTV-13 recently aired a news report that put emphasis on how easy malicious actors can create fraudulent tokens and have them sold on decentralized finance (DeFi) platforms like Uniswap.
According to crypto-journalist Colin Wu, the largest official TV station in China started to pay attention to the DeFi platform and even asked a security company in SlowMist to demonstrate the process of issuing coins on Uniswap and eventually make a “rug pull.”
CCTV, for its part, tackled in its story that anyone can create their own tokens and some of these can even mimic other projects in the decentralized finance ecosystem. The media outlet even cited the fake token TRTC that surfaced last November to argue for its case.
TRTC and rug pulls
As for the fake token, after TRTC launched and began trading, its users discovered they can’t sell their token holdings after purchasing them owing to the fact that its smart contract mandated only its creator can authorize the sales.
To cut the story short, the developers were able to defraud around 59 ethereum which would amount to around $165,000 based on current prices from the victims who were left puzzled by the apparent scam that took away their funds.
A question of why
Some are puzzled by the move of the TV channel, as according to “China Firewall Test” that checks if a page is blocked by the “Great Firewall of China”, Uniswap and all its sub-domains are inaccessible within the country.
With that, it is not clear why CCTV-13 would go out of its way to use the DeFi platform as an example for their discussion about relevant security risks.
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