[WTB/SEEKING INFO] UCS Coins - Addresses, peels, purchase

[raghavsood]

I would like to get my hands on some United Crypto States coins - I'm trying to add them to the collectibles tracker, but there is no published address list (or known public addresses at all, based on their site)

I'm open to peeling some if I need to to discover the addresses, but I would also like to not pay huge premiums over the melt value - buying directly from them, with international shipping, seems akin to setting money on fire.

If anyone here has ever peeled any of their coins and can share the address details (PM, if you do not want to post publicly), that would be swell.

Alternatively, if anyone is seeking to get rid of funded coins that I can peel at a sane value (I'm happy to pay slightly over the metal spot), that would be great too.

Ideally, I would want to collect information from a few different coins to be able to cover as much on-chain ground as possible.

[raghavsood]

I reached out to their team via email hoping for an address list, and received the following:

Hello, dear Raghav Sood
Unfortunately, I have very little knowledge of cryptocurrencies. You can follow the link above. On the website, you can find instructions on how to use the cryptocurrency embedded in the coin

Thanks for your time and Have a nice day!

Not exactly what you want to hear from someone minting loaded coins.

[MoparMiningLLC]

if buying from them is like setting money on fire, then anyone selling you one for less than they paid is akin to them setting their money on fire lol

I have one for sale (not mine) recently received in a box of items to list on the forums - I have not finished inventorying the box - but for the UCS coin, they are asking $100 - if too steep, give me an offer and I will share with them.

[raghavsood]

if buying from them is like setting money on fire, then anyone selling you one for less than they paid is akin to them setting their money on fire lol

I have one for sale (not mine) recently received in a box of items to list on the forums - I have not finished inventorying the box - but for the UCS coin, they are asking $100 - if too steep, give me an offer and I will share with them.

I've occasionally seen them pop up for less than original retail value from people who got them as gifts etc. Of course, I'm equally happy if someone has already peeled one and can share the address, but given their low value I don't think many (if any) are peeled - the tx fees would eat up the entire load value.

Do you know which one is in the box? I can make an offer based on the metal/load value, they do differ a bit across the series.

[Steeley]

Hello, dear Raghav Sood
Unfortunately, I have very little knowledge of cryptocurrencies. You can follow the link above. On the website, you can find instructions on how to use the cryptocurrency embedded in the coin

Thanks for your time and Have a nice day!

United Crypto States TO DO List:

1. Let's put someone in position to answer questions customers might have.
      Status: Accomplished!

2. Make sure that person answering questions knows stuff.
      Status: Pending

[MoparMiningLLC]

if buying from them is like setting money on fire, then anyone selling you one for less than they paid is akin to them setting their money on fire lol

I have one for sale (not mine) recently received in a box of items to list on the forums - I have not finished inventorying the box - but for the UCS coin, they are asking $100 - if too steep, give me an offer and I will share with them.

I've occasionally seen them pop up for less than original retail value from people who got them as gifts etc. Of course, I'm equally happy if someone has already peeled one and can share the address, but given their low value I don't think many (if any) are peeled - the tx fees would eat up the entire load value.

Do you know which one is in the box? I can make an offer based on the metal/load value, they do differ a bit across the series.

it is the one with the "Liberty" front - the first one they made in 2022 with .00001 BTC

[ChiBitCTy]

I reached out to their team via email hoping for an address list, and received the following:

Hello, dear Raghav Sood
Unfortunately, I have very little knowledge of cryptocurrencies. You can follow the link above. On the website, you can find instructions on how to use the cryptocurrency embedded in the coin

Thanks for your time and Have a nice day!

Not exactly what you want to hear from someone minting loaded coins.

Lulz, color me unsurprised. SMH

@Raghavsood- good stuff man. Appreciate all the work you’ve been putting in lately. Def not going unnoticed by me!

[raghavsood]

The saga continues. I followed up with

Hi,

I am not trying to redeem a coin - I am trying to determine the addresses associated with the coins.

Would it be possible to connect me to the team member(s) involved with the loading of the coins and the private key generation?

Cheers,
Raghav Sood

2 days later, I received (verbatim):

https://www.ucs-coins.com/manual

Manual

I doubt I'm going to receive much information from them - I have ordered a set of UCS coins - 1 of every coin still available on topworldcoins.

I will update once I have them in hand and can explore further.

[Cryptogreatdane]

I dont think anyone has actually ever redeemed one of these. Thats why they funded with such a small amount. Cost more to redeem them what you receive. They just want to capitalize on the physical bitcoin popularity without actually being responsible for the product. Be curious to see what happens with your investigation

[raghavsood]

The coins have arrived today.

I must say, the packaging is generally quite nice - especially for the Binary Bull, Binary Eagle, and Binary Puma, which come in nice wooden etui with booklets (for some reason, the Puma also came in a nice pouch for the case, but the other two didn't).

The three Binary coins are the only ones with serials, and that too only in the booklets - interestingly, I got low serials for the Bull and the Eagle (28 and 26 respectively), and a higher serial for the Puma (342).

The rest are in cardboard boxes which are somewhat flimsy. Nevertheless, the packaging is good with foam inserts and chunky airtites.



I will likely peel them later this week and record the process.

[MoparMiningLLC]

I was not aware there was this many USC coins.

[raghavsood]

I was not aware there was this many USC coins.

There is one more that was "out of stock". I basically just bought one of everything on topworldcoins that was still available.

I'm not certain how "real" their stock status is, given that the only one I couldn't get was a 2022 edition of the Ukraine Land of Freedom coin, which is also coincidentally the only coin that has a near-identical 2024 version.

[raghavsood]

All 10 coins have been peeled, and lead to quite a few interesting discoveries.

A much longer post is incoming, stay tuned.

[gpfrag]

All 10 coins have been peeled, and lead to quite a few interesting discoveries.

A much longer post is incoming, stay tuned.

Looking forward to it kind sir. I really like their coins so quite interested in your findings.

[raghavsood]

Well, all I've received from them on my follow up questions is silence, so I will present what I have found so far without any comments from topworldcoins or UCS.

The short version is that I strongly believe United Crypto States to be a well orchestrated scam, with potential links to the Sol Noctis operation and Sol Noctis Binary Bull compromise.

There are still some things I am digging into and not prepared to prematurely share, but I am confident in saying that nobody should be purchasing these coins with the fair expectation of it being a loaded Bitcoin collectible.

Background

As part of my efforts to expand the index on collectible.money, I purchased several United Crypto States (UCS) coins from TopWorldCoins (TWC). As per the ucs-coins [.] com website (https://archive.is/P8lWD, not all the fancy animations got captured), TWC is their sole authorized distributor and responsible for any questions and follow ups.

I purchased one of each available coin, as follows:



A pretty penny spent on these.

I received the coins via UPS, shipped from Poland as expected. They arrived in good condition, and overall the packaging and actual detailing on the coins is of high quality.

The Peel

My coins consisted of:

8x 0.00001 BTC
1x 0.001 ETH
1x 1 DOGE

All coins visually appear to have identical holos, despite having a range of mint dates. In particular, the Doge was purpotedly their first coin in 2022, followed by a slew of BTC coins, and the ETH (Puma) in 2023. The newest, marked as 2024, are the Liberty Indian Head, a rehash of Ukraine The Land of Freedom, Binary Bull and Liberty of Ukraine.

The three Binary Bull, Puma, and Eagle coins are jumbo 2oz coins, while the other 7 are 1oz. The 3 Binary coins are also the only ones that come with COAs and serials.

I initially attemped to peel the coins, as one would (this was my mistake, had I watched the video on their manual page (https://archive.is/iTFn4) I would have known not to do this). This was immediately a bad idea as it resulted in the entire hologram assembly, sticker and key, lifting off the coin - reminiscent of the time I tried to peel a Sol Noctis Eagle and overpeeled it accidentally (the same experience has been confirmed by others on the forum for Sol Noctis coins).

After making that mistake, I took the more expected route - as it turns out, their holograms aren't hologram stickers - They are scratch off holographic foil, similar to what you see on lottery tickets and arcade cards.

I gently scratched them off - I didn't have a US penny on hand, so I used an old TheBitcoinPenny - close enough. They scratched off easily and obviously, revealing QR codes for the private keys.

And then things went south...

The Scam

Of the 10 private keys, ONLY 3 KEYS contained were in a standard format and contained a balance. These were:

Ukraine Land of Freedom 2024 - Wallet Import Format - 1000 sats
Liberty Lady 2022 - Wallet Import Format - 1000 sats
Binary Puma - 64 character hex key prefixed with 0x (total 66 chars) - 0.001 ETH

The remaining 7 keys, including the DOGE key from what should be their first coin, were 44 character base58 strings. Sounds familiar? It is the same non-standard format that was previously used in Sol Noctis Binary Bull and Eagle coins, although apparently not in all of them (the Sol Noctis Eagle I peeled had a standard minikey)

EdLEZieDbChBMHJp858568iYuhcKWQNBWbBKeQMuckc9 is represented as ca76964390a3d7b99f0451a0a95a55a2098f9700cf6b0a2369a76b311d60427a in hex, and this is the private key for 13NgxJBSk2bwWd2W4cr4XQqNNQTmyoCM4a.

It looks like Sol Noctis took a private key in hex format and converted it to base58 without any of the necessary preprocessing to generate a WIF-encoded key. The 0x80 mainnet flag is not prepended, nor is the 0x01 flag to denote a compressed public key appended. Lastly the checksum is missing.
✂️

I replicated this in my own code, and verified I got it right by using the key in the original Sol Noctis thread and checking I got the same address.

However, all 7 keys pointed to Bitcoin addresses that were empty - I tried all variations - compressed p2pkh, uncompressed p2pkh, p2wpkh-p2sh, p2wpkh, and they all came up blank.

I emailed TopWorldCoins on September 5th, 6th, and 9th. I have provided them with one of the seven keys and asked for a reproducible set of instructions on how to redeem them. I have not shared all the keys to avoid a situation where they fund them post-fact and claim it was all good all along. At this stage, I do not believe that TopWorldCoins knows which address belongs to which physical coin, so without my providing the keys to them they have no way of knowing which address to retroactively fund.

As of this post, I have not received a reply from TopWorldCoins.

The Murky Waters

Okay, so I set a bunch of money on fire, but what for?

Fortunately for us, we do have two funded BTC addresses and 1 funded ETH address, which means we can do a little digging. There is a lot of digging to do, so this section is going to be incomplete.

Although one of the BTC addresses, 1K5MMwoi9QZtYehsNrBwhGEm2U5xr1jjts, comes from a key attached to the 2024 Ukraine Land of Freedom coin (the reverse of the coin has the year 2024 struck on it), the address itself was funded in July 2022, when UCS purportedly started. In contrast, the address from the 2022 Liberty Lady (135oPtqYoKqs4T9ghnxCgnuXogK8D8kwW5), UCS' second coin after the DOGE, was funded in July 2021.

The ETH address (0x993C91246D0B7A0479A4cD4D0AAcCAFdf9739D02), comes from the 2023 Binary Puma - it was funded in July 2022 as well.

Moreover, the Puma has a stated mintage of 1000 - I received Coin 342/1000. However, looking at their ETH transactions, a total of 2150 ETH addresses were funded in July 2022 with 0.001 ETH each. Similarly, close to 10000 BTC addresses (I do not have an exact figure for these yet), were funded across at least two batches in 2021 and 2022.

Of course, based on what we've seen with the 2022 address on a 2024 coin, it is possible they just prefund large amounts (give that it costs them nothing, since no one ever peels), and use them up over time. That would imply they have one or more ETH coins lined up to follow the Puma.

I was not able to trace anything on Doge as the Doge key points to an empty address.

There are some other shady dealings here, which I'm still tracing on-chain - if they lead anywhere, I will follow up with more information.


It is as of yet unclear to me if the 7 coins are intentionally unfunded. It is entirely possible the operation is so sloppy they generated many batches of addresses and started putting keys on coins that haven't been funded yet. It is also possible that after a few thousand coins minted and sold across their 11 releases, they realized no one actually ever peels these and just stopped funding them altogether.

At least one Binary Bull was swept out from under the owner. At least three Eagles had similar 44 character private keys that minerjones had to assist the owner in redeeming. I do not consider the UCS coins to be secure, and retroactively strongly believe that all remaining Sol Noctis coins should be considered suspect as well.

[gpfrag]

Thanks for posting results and disappointed with findings. 
The coins I have (just two) are very high quality and it also said a portion would be donated to Ukraine. 

[raghavsood]

Thanks for posting results and disappointed with findings. 
The coins I have (just two) are very high quality and it also said a portion would be donated to Ukraine. 

The coins are well made - honestly, I'd be much happier if they just sold them as DIY or actually funded them. I'm not sad about losing my 1 DOGE and 6000 sats, it's a negligible amount.

It's just the principle of the thing, really. If you're going to sell loaded coins, just load them.

I still have not heard back from TWC, and I'm starting to think I won't.

[raghavsood]

I have finally received a reply from TWC. They offered to cover return shipping and allow me to return the 7 "defective" coins in exchange for a replacement or refund.

No acknowledgement of the private keys leading to empty addresses, or alternative key->address generation is given. The reply completely omits any mention of Bitcoin, loaded/unloaded value, and crypto.

I have asked again for a working key to address-containing-1000-sats solution, and declined to return the coins until they can provide that.

[ChiBitCTy]

FANTASTIC work here! I know how much work this stuff is and I am not even tech savvy enough to do the chain analysis stuff like you have been, which sure as shit adds a lot more work.

(Sending DM in next day or two. I want to send ya some “freebies” for all your hard work. If that’s cool w/you. I encourage anyone in the community who collects to do the same that can afford to do so, as you mentioned I know buying all these coins wasn’t a cheap project. You did a big favor for all of us here and those that will stumble across this thread )

No surprise here



As for TopWorld Coins, as I’ve been saying for years, they are fraudulent scumbags and nothing they’ve produced should be trusted. Any Sol Noctis or UnitedCryptoStates sales should be done so with a disclaimer. Also, collectors need to STOP sending any of these coins to Stacks/Heritage or ANY auction house. It’s only a matter of time until the auction houses stop selling our coins anyhow as in the last few Stacks auctions a number of now “compromised” coins have been sold (MrHodl/RarityCheck/CryptoArt/Microsoul ..to name a few. As soon as someone finds out their btc isn’t on their coins, and complains, it’s all over.

I encourage everyone to leave negative reviews for TopWorld anywhere possible (esp BBB , if that’s possible, can’t remember off top head if they rate non-US companies too). What sucks is r/coins moderators are a bunch of bitches and won’t let anyone post a negative review/warnings regarding coin company, esp “crypto coins” even though many are now legal tender, smh. r/coins is the number 1 place on the web to discuss coins if have to imagine and they are doing a huge Fuckn disservice by not allowing this Freedom of speech/censorship. Which is esp-pathetic being that Aaron Schwartz, co-creator, gave his life to freedom of information and non-censorship. Beyond pisses me off. Anyways just wanted to add this in case any r/coins mods ever read this. So, f yourselves.

Also, if would be appreciated if others contacted 3rd party resellers to put pressure on them to stop selling these. I will once again reach out to the scumbags at JM Bullion who don’t give a shit about selling a fraudulent product, as well as others such as Apmex, coin shoppe of CA, GovMint, who currently offer the coins.

Apmex description lol- funny as it’s almost like they designed the coins and private keys in a manner to dissuade collectors to EVER peel them. Surely has nothing to do with the way they generated the keys, which almost no one without a strong knowledge of cryptography could ever redeem by themselves. Curious indeed 🙄

[LoyceV]

The coins are well made - honestly, I'd be much happier if they just sold them as DIY or actually funded them. I'm not sad about losing my 1 DOGE and 6000 sats, it's a negligible amount.

So you paid them €1500 for coins, and they saved $4 by not funding them? What's wrong with those people?