A screenshot of the Coolcat app. Many residents trading on fake app Coolcat were on tenterhooks after the app disappeared – PHOTO: CHANH TRUNG

HCMC – Many residents trading hundreds of millions of Vietnamese dong on fake app Coolcat were on tenterhooks after the app disappeared.

Over the past few days, many residents nationwide who poured hundreds of millions to billions of Vietnamese dong into Coolcat were worried as they failed to locate the app, a type of exchange for gold, virtual currency and U.S. dollars.

“I invested VND200 million in the Coolcat app after learning that it was an exchange with 100% capital insurance and brought high profits to the investors,” N.M.Ngoc, who resides in HCMC’s Tan Binh District, told the Saigon Times.

“However, a few days ago, I failed to locate the app, so I was worried that I would not regain my money,” he said.

Many other residents in Hanoi, Danang, Bac Kan, Bac Ninh, Hai Duong, Binh Phuoc, Haiphong, Ninh Thuan and Hau Giang also invested in the Coolcat app.

The app has attracted many users as it offers high profits. After participants downloaded the app and signed in with their phone numbers, they would be provided with a code to make bets on the prices of Bitcoin and gold. If they won, they would get 75% of the winning money and a refund if they lost.

Earlier in late 2020, competent agencies warned residents and firms of online scams. In the local market, hundreds of forex websites and apps such as FXPro.vn, Coolcatapp.com and Wefinex are operating in a multilevel marketing way.

Experts said that such financial exchanges and forex apps often posed much risk as investors’ transactions were conducted via their accounts linked to the apps that were yet to be licensed by State authorities. As such, if they faced some problems related to the apps, they would not get any protection.

Coolcat or Wefinex is an exchange with binary option trading in which the payoff for bets on the prices of crypto, gold and stocks is either some fixed monetary amount or nothing at all, a technology financial expert in HCMC said on April 21.