First, if they are scamming, you wouldn't know if purchases are real. It's a known con tactic to appear flashy and big to fool investors into thinking "it's big, so it must be legit." It's the same way that happened with Gaw miners and Paycoin. So many gullible investors burned for millions of dollars. At that time, everything appeared above board, except there's no evidence of actual mining from the company. Paycoin even had a large cult of followers/forum. Eventually, it fell apart. I believe the same thing will happen to QTUM. Maybe it will happen around August, 2017. First, there will be lots of excuses and no substantial proof of development, etc etc. And then the final blow will be a pump by the whales to lure in more dumb investors. Learn from history, dudes.

Second, since the Chinese market is their main victim, these people don't hold btc and eth as much as Westerners do. Their exchanges basically pair crypto with fiat (CNY), unlike the Western exchanges which pair altcoins with either eth or btc.