What is going on with Verge (XVG) cryptocurrency?

There are some strange things going on with Verge (XVG) and the team behind it. To say that last week was quite bumpy for the top 20 cryptocurrency would be a definite understatement. Verge is slowly becoming one of the most controversial cryptocurrency projects.

Verge’s history

Verge started way back in 2014 by a developer who goes by the allies of Sunerok with a support of 200 community volunteers. For the most part, Verge was not very well known but its popularity rose relatively steadily. It wasn’t until John McAfee promoted the coin at the December 13th, which pumped up the price. This is where the start of the controversy

John Mcafee promotion

Founder of McAfee Antivirus, John McAfee allegedly promoted the coin on Twitter for $105,000 to his  800,000 followers. This resulted in 100% increase in price within 24h. But the hype didn’t stop there. Over a course of 10 days, Verge skyrocketed and reached an all-time high of $0,29 per coin. To get more of a feel for what a boom this was. The cryptocurrency went from #79 and $115mln  Market cap to #16 and over $4.3bln in just 10 days.

But the word came out when Verge didn’t give John a penny for the $3bln increase in market cap. Allegedly John’s phone was hacked and positive claims about Verge made on twitter simply were not true.

Wraith protocol

Following the McAfee incident, Wraith protocol was announced on Verges official channels on medium and Twitter. Date of release was set for December 31 of 2107. However, the team delayed the release date four times.

Wraith Protocol is a technology that allows the user to seamlessly switch between public and private ledgers on the Verge Blockchain.

Once the Protocol was finally out, technically it wasn’t anything impressive. The lack of transparency and plain manipulation of the community caused many Verge investors to sell their holdings.

Verge developers asking for charity

The lead developer, Justin Sunerok, has launched a crowdfunding campaign to raise nearly $3m in XVG coins. He claimed that the funds gathered will be used to secure a ”strategic business alliance” with an unnamed global organization. Meanwhile, Sunerok made a thread on twitter asking for the help of the community about the Coinbase situation. This action backfired immensely and resulted in community backlash. Although there isn’t concrete evidence the community formed an opinion that Sunerok launched the crowdfunding to help pay his taxes. Postponing the release date until 17th of April which is a day later than taxes are due does not help his defense.

The team  unknowingly hard forked mid 51% attack

On April 4th, Verge was the target of a 51% attack, which lasted much longer than just 3h. In fact, the attack was put in place the next day. It was assessed that the attacker mined additional 19,500,000 coins. What is even more amazing is that the developers rushed a fix, which turned out to be a hard fork. Since the attacker already hijacked the network this didn’t make much impact, but it shows in how capable hands is the top 20 cryptocurrency.

Because of all of the above, I would recommend exercising extreme caution in dealing with the Verge cryptocurrency. Although the community does not seem to be phased by all of this. Pushing the price of the coin over 60% up to $0,088 per coin.

Last article on Verge.