In the field of cryptocurrency investment, crypto investment sharing communities have become one of the important channels for investors to obtain information. They often follow group owners (such as KOLs) through social media and join the Web3 investment groups they create to obtain the latest cryptocurrency trends and investment analysis in a timely manner. However, many of these communities have set a high entry fee. Therefore, a new cryptocurrency information sharing model, the "paid information transfer group", came into being - with only a very low entry fee , users can join the group to obtain high-quality crypto investment information transferred by the group owner.
It seems that there is nothing wrong with the operation of transferring information. But in fact, as a group owner, there are many legal compliance issues that need to be paid attention to.
What is a paid moving group?
The group owners/operators of the cryptocurrency paid information transfer group (hereinafter referred to as the "cryptocurrency transfer group") usually claim that they have subscribed to multiple high-value cryptocurrency paid communities and can use the robot's "keyword capture" function to transfer the internal information of other paid communities in real time. "One group entry fee, multiple group information" has indeed attracted many people to pay.
The operating modes of these cryptocurrency transfer groups usually include the following characteristics:
Multi-source integration: information within the group may come from multiple paid communities, covering multiple fields such as Web3 market information and player investment analysis.
For automated transfer, many community group owners will use Bots to set keywords to automatically capture and forward information from the target community.
Real-time updates, because they use Bots to automatically crawl and forward, these groups are generally considered to be able to deliver cryptocurrency information in a timely manner.
Low-price strategy, group owners often emphasize that the membership fee is much lower than the membership fee of the information source community, for example, "spend a few hundred U to experience the paid group strategy worth more than 20,000 U."
Value-added services: In addition to forwarding information, some community group owners also provide simple interpretations or suggestions in an attempt to create additional value for users.
Taking a certain moving group that is currently undergoing promotion as an example, the platform claims that it has paid to join more than 30 top paid high-quality communities, and synchronizes information in real time 24 hours a day through robots, providing group members with multi-dimensional information including but not limited to contract trading, spot prices, short-selling, etc.
Notice for coin transfer group owners
These characteristics of the paid information transfer groups in the cryptocurrency circle can usually attract a large number of Web3 investment users to join the paid membership and achieve a win-win situation for users and group owners. However, attorney Mankiw believes that in this process, the group owners of the cryptocurrency transfer groups must also pay attention to some legal compliance issues. For example, the article "Operating the TG Telegram Group Was Sentenced! How Can the Web3 Community Operate Compliance?" previously published by Mankiw Law Firm has analyzed the compliance issues of collecting cryptocurrency membership fees and providing investment advice. At the same time, as the paid transfer group owner of the cryptocurrency circle, you also need to pay attention to the following aspects:
1. Infringement of information transfer
In the model of paid information transfer groups, one problem that cannot be avoided is the infringement of other KOLs’ intellectual property rights.
KOLs usually have copyrights for original content they publish in paid communities, such as in-depth market analysis, exclusive project evaluations, etc., which are protected by intellectual property laws. In addition, judging from the community rules and daily speeches of KOLs, most paid communities explicitly prohibit members from spreading information within the group outside of the community, which can also be regarded as further protection of KOLs' copyrights.
In this case, the community group owner copied and disseminated unauthorized original information and profited from it, which not only violated the service contract between him and the original community KOL, but also may constitute intellectual property infringement and be held accountable by the corresponding KOL.
Not only that, operating one's own community by copying paid content from other communities is also likely to be regarded as unfair competition by means of infringing on trade secrets, violating the law and business ethics, and damaging the legitimate rights and interests of the original creators.
2. Lack of information review
The group owner of a message-transferring group usually also has to consider the authenticity and accuracy of the group messages.
The payment model of the transfer group determines that the group owner and the group members are not simply "netizens", but a service relationship is established between them: members pay the group entry fee, and the group owner regularly releases cryptocurrency investment news. Therefore, the community group owner should ensure the quality of service and avoid publishing false or erroneous information to mislead group members.
However, most transfer groups use automated tools to capture information, and it is usually difficult to review the information one by one. As a result, if members invest based on this unverified information and suffer losses, the community owner may face certain legal compliance issues:
Regarding breach of contract, if members suffer investment losses due to reliance on false or erroneous information, the group owner may be deemed to have breached the contract and face the risk of bearing civil liability for compensation.
Fraud issue: If the community group owner knows that the information may be problematic but continues to spread it, it may even be considered as fraudulent behavior.
Regulatory penalties: In some cases, if the spread of false information has a serious impact, it may attract the attention and penalties of regulatory authorities.
3. Project publicity issues
In addition, many porting groups will accept promotion invitations from Web3 projects and promote specific projects within the group.
According to Article 148 of the Civil Code, if the group owner's false statements lead investors to mistakenly purchase tokens or participate in projects, thereby causing property losses, his or her actions will constitute civil fraud and investors will have the right to claim compensation.
What is more serious is that if the group owner has the intention to illegally occupy the investors' property, and uses deceptive means to enable the project party to obtain the investors' funds, which ultimately causes the investors to suffer property losses, his behavior is very likely to violate the crime of fraud stipulated in Article 266 of the Criminal Law and bear criminal liability.
Attorney Mankiw's Summary
As a new information dissemination model, the paid information transfer group in the cryptocurrency circle has become an important track for community group owners to develop members, but it also brings legal compliance issues that cannot be ignored. Therefore, the group owners of cryptocurrency transfer groups should be aware of the legal boundaries of their own behavior. Attorney Mankiw recommends that the following measures can be taken to regulate management:
Obtain authorization , establish a formal cooperative relationship with the KOL or community group owner of the original content, and obtain clear authorization for content reprinting.
Clearly mark the source . For reprinted or quoted content, be sure to clearly mark the original author and source, and respect the intellectual property rights of the original author.
Strengthen information review and manually review the information captured by robots to ensure the authenticity and reliability of the information.
Make the disclaimer clear . Make the disclaimer clear in the group rules and remind group members to judge the authenticity of the information on their own.
Compliance publicity : When promoting a project, conduct compliance investigations on the project and avoid exaggerating publicity or promising benefits to ensure the objectivity of the promotional content.
The emergence of paid information transfer groups reflects the market's demand for high-quality, low-cost information. However, while enjoying the convenience, community group owners and group members should be aware of potential legal compliance points and jointly maintain a healthy and compliant information exchange environment. If you encounter problems in creating or operating a paid transfer group in the cryptocurrency circle, please contact a lawyer for compliance consultation in a timely manner.
