Privacy coin Apollo Currency is being accused of misleading investors and running a pump-and-dump scheme. After the coin quadrupled in value over the past few days, millions of APL coins were dropped on exchanges. These major sell-offs allegedly come from the Apollo Currency team themselves, perhaps crypto-evangelist John McAfee who's involved in the project.
Apollo Currency is actively banning people from their Telegram, when they ask questions about the pump-and-dump or say something negative. The coin's CEO Steve McCullah hasn't been addressing the situation in any way on either Telegram or Twitter, but he did mention the price was going back up right at the moment someone placed some big orders.
According to criticizers this wouldn't be the first time Apollo Currency is doing a pump-and-dump scheme. The coin is thriving on the enthusiasm of its own loyal army, while censoring every voice that goes against it.
It's not all bad, what's coming from Apollo though. The group rejected an exchange listing for their APL coin on HitBTC, and therefore basically gave the exchange $400.000 for doing nothing. They believed HitBTC was fraudulent, and therefore didn't wish to be associated with it.
APL is currently listed on IDAX, CoinPulse, Nebula, BitMart and Coinbene. Some of these exchanges have been accused of wash trading in recent months.
The Apollo team denies anything bad is happening right now. The coin went up 400% in value over the course of several days. It's actually quite normal for traders to cash out and take their profits. However, the accusations are mainly that the core team behind APL has cashed out... but whether that's really true, is hard to say for sure.
Posted from my blog: https://www.nederob.nl/2019/01/22/apollo-accused-of-pump-and-dump-scheme/