Is AfricGold legit or a scam?

Recently our intelligence team came across AfricGold (https://africgoldm.com/) which claims to be a mining platform. Their websites say “AfricGold is a Gold-backed digital mining application designed to be a highly secure platform design for future miners. Start mining and achieve the highest level of Hashrate.”

AfricGold lists a four-step process to use and earn money from their platform:

1. Buy a membership pin
2. Create account
3. Start Mining
4. Get mining output

Their FAQ section has some interesting questions and answers, for the purposes of this investigation, we will review two of such questions and answers.

In respond to the question Will it crash? They write ‘It would never crash because there would always be enough funds to mine and earn. Units of gold supplied daily is prior to how much profit the platform makes daily. However, it’s a decentralized platform. You MINE, EARN, and withdraw as you wish.“

To apprise these claims, we begin with the question which cryptocurrency is being mined? From what is written on the website it seems to be a virtual currency called AFGold. Their websites states “AFRICGOLD is a dual-purpose platform made up of subsidiaries that provide an opportunity to utilize AFGOLD Virtual mining technique, which is intended for evaluating mining revenue and as well as conversion of AFGOLD units to real word money and cash out as at when due.”

Mining AFGOLD units means that AfricGold has its own blockchain. But no mention of this or evidence of this is on its website, or whether the mining is done via proof-of-work or proof-of-stake method. We note that the writeup on the website is very vague.

The second thing in their FAQ that caught our attention was the question “After registration, what will I do to earn? And the answer to this is “AFRICGOLD is a dual-purpose platform, it’s either you mine to earn or earn through affiliate marketing.“

Let us for the sake of argument grant that AfricGold has its own blockchain where AFGOLD is being mined, they next question would then be how does someone earn money after mining AFGOLD? What makes bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies profitable is their current value. Profit comes from selling the cryptocurrency and deducting the cost of mining. But what value has AFGOLD? It is not even listed in any exchange. Hence, the only way any money is being made here is through referrals, what they craftily term “affiliate marketing.” This setup is a pyramid scheme masquerading as a crypto mining offering. We offer more evidence of this hypothesis below.

When one visits the website of AfricGold, a noticeable feature is a pop-up notification on the lower left-hand corner of someone having referred or started mining on the website. See the screenshot below.

A perusal of the source code for AfricGold’s website revealed that this notification is not a live notification but pre-loaded. All the names and places have already been pre-loaded into a JavaScript code that varies the output at random once you visit the website to deceive you into thinking it is a live notification and that people are really using the website. Below is the screenshot of the code and a snippet as found on the website.

<script type="db3bf75b8afc87d0e363df04-text/javascript">

    $(document).ready(function() {
        $('#notification-1').Notification({
            // Notification varibles
            Varible1: ["David","Jack","Olivia","Samuel","Thomas","William","Adam","Dylan","Luke","Matthew","Ethan","Nathan","Archie","Oscar","Lucas","Isaac","Tom","Gabriel","Reuben","Sean","Jude","Leon","Tanaka","Sasaki","Kimura","Yamada","Hayashi","Ogawa","Lisa","Grete","Sandra","Anna","Kati","Stacy","Jane"],
            Varible2: ["Ikeja","Lagos","Kaduna","Kwara","Delta","Ghana","Cameroon","Makurdi","Uyo","Eket","Awka","Enugu","Kebbi","Jos","Kogi","Nasarrawa","Kebbi","Lokoja","Abia"],
            Varible3: ["registerd", "started mining", "referred"],
            Amount: [100, 50000],
            Content: '[Varible1] from [Varible2] has just [Varible3].',
            // Timer
            Show: ['random', 5, 10],
            Close: 5,
            Time: [0, 23],
            // Notification style
            LocationTop: [false, '5%'],
            LocationBottom:[true, '5%'],
            LocationRight: [false, '5px'],
            LocationLeft:[true, '10px'],
            Background: '#252c40',
            BorderRadius: 5,
            BorderWidth: 3,
            BorderColor: 'gold',
            TextColor: 'white',
            IconColor: 'orange',
            // Notification Animated
            AnimationEffectOpen: 'fadeInUp',
            AnimationEffectClose: 'fadeOutDown',
            // Number of notifications
            Number: 100,
            // Notification link
            Link: [false, '#']

        });


    });

</script>

From the code snippet, you can see the name “Hayashi” among variable1 and the place “Eket” among variable 2 and “referred” in variable 3, all three are in the screenshot of the pop-up notification above. This shows conclusively that the pop of notification is just a tool to deceive.

A further study of the source code revealed a connection to two other websites. The first, BittALAT (bittalat.com) is an exact replica of AfricGold. See screenshots from the about section of BittALAT and AfricGold for comparison.

The second website Ravetok (ravetok.com) though having a fresh design still has the same content with AfricGold. One of the blog posts on the website even still has AFGOLD written in it.

In conclusion, we recommend that you stay away from AfricGold, BittALAT and Ravetok as they are the same entity, an outright swindle masquerading as a cryptocurrency mining opportunity.