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I live in Dominican Republic, and have never heard of this here. I guess being outside of the regular social networks and mainstream services does keep some of us away from some news. Time to do some digging into this.
Edit (update): So, basically they were operating in commercial malls without any permits and they are not even registered in the country. While you can own cryptocurrency, it’s impossible to use as payment method or to exchange for actual money unless it’s done with some shady crypto exchange. People were given the equivalent to US$100 in exchange for scanning their iris. And, of course, there’s always people that would sell their soul to the devil for way less than that, so you can imagine how great it went for them.
Not all crypto is this scammy. That’s for sure. Monero is actually used as money and people buy items with it on a fairly regular basis. XMRBazaar and MoneroMarket have ~2900 items and services you can purchase directly with Monero and that number is growing at a steady pace. Plus there are business directories like Monerica that have more businesses listed.
I wouldn’t be surprised if it suddenly crashes and the mugshots get sold to some surveillance AI tech company.
