A Romanian from Arad, a city in Western Romania, sold a house for 55,000 Mcoins, a new virtual currency that launched at the beginning of this year. The Mcoin was created by a firm called CoinsRace, which is registered in Gibraltar.

The news, which appeared on local news agencies, websites and televisions, raises many questions, according to specialists. Members of the bitcointalk.org forum, one of the largest forums in the world dedicated to virtual currencies, commented that the Mcoin could be a hoax or a Ponzi scheme.

It’s a bit unexpected that such a large transaction would take place in Romania with virtual money. The Romanians have been skeptical in adopting the more popular Bitcoin, and there are still few people and businesses in Romania that accept Bitcoin payments.

“The first purchase transaction with Bitcoin (ever) was done for 2 Papa John’s Pizzas. This puts Mcoin at the top of the crypto currency lists and is forecasting an amazingly bright future for this new crypto currency,” according to CoinsRace’s Facebook page.

The second warning sign is the fact that the Mcoin is not currently trading on a virtual currency exchange, or there is no such information available publicly. This makes it impossible to assess the value of this currency. The Romanian media wrote that one Mcoin is currently valued at some EUR 0.5, four times more than at the beginning of this year, when it was launched, but there is no public record of that.

Thirdly, people who want to earn the virtual currency via the “traditional” online mining process (which applies for most virtual currencies) must pay EUR 500 per year for an equipment called CRX unit. But before they can be able to buy that, they must first buy a VIP franchise from another company called ByXpress for EUR 1,200, according to a previous post by local blog trilema.com. ByXpress, also registered in Gibraltar, is set to launch officially in May, according to its website.

Mcoin is not yet nearly as popular as Bitcoin. A simple Google search will reveal that as there are thousands of articles on Bitcoin and very few on Mcoin.

While many investors think that virtual currencies are the future and that they can get rich by investing in these payment instruments, pundits warn that people should also be aware of the risks and the potential scams.

editor@romania-insider.com

(Photo source: Mcoin Facebook page)