I was on the fence about what type of ponzi bitconnect was. Whether it was the kind that could keep its doors open for a while... or if it was the kind that would run with the money. It appears, this ponzi was the smart kind and when they were doing their best, they took the money and ran. They did this right after a big conference in Indonesia where they probably lured a whole new round of huge capital investments.
https://bitconnect.co/system-news/72/bitconnect-accessibility-update-glitch-in-the-websites-service/
"The issue has been that many members have withdrawn more BTC and BCC than they held in their wallet. " What a surprise. Login is disabled for most all users now.
Now come the people who were promoting it who are going to make excuses for promoting it, some of their followers dumping 10k up to 100k in this thing. One person was sitting on 100,000 in commissions. This is well over 1 million invested in the platform just under that person alone.
If I went around promoting a ponzi scheme and getting paid for it, the FBI would likely be knocking on my door one day. Some people promoting such activities have commented on their channel they refuse to pay the IRS taxes.
I point all this out because I can understand personal limitations in terms of doing things the right way. US citizens who have had low income for much of their lives, they can develop a mentality where the government will not go after them. This is because they are small fries with no income. As soon as you have income for the government to sink its teeth into, along with felony behavior, they are far less likely to turn a blind eye to the things low income people get away with, such as minor tax dodging.
For anyone engaging in illegal activity in the US concerning cryptocurrency choices, I think it is probable a person can get away with it if they keep a low profile. Yet, if you release YouTube videos promoting illegal activities and stating you do not pay tax on your cryptocurrency earnings, very likely, someone is going to report you to the IRS or FBI. The investigation will be as simple as pointing them to a YouTube link.
Even though I do not engage in illegal activities, I have considered shutting down my media content to prevent future IRS audits. Also, the regulatory environment in the US is unclear concerning some cryptocurrency situations.
I just cannot imagine taking advantage of my viewers this badly on an investment situation, profiting from it, and then facing them again. I have chewed on my fingernails considerably in the past when I would make a bad call on something. I catch a lot of flack for my good calls even, which YouTubers complain about because they do not like some of them. This baffled me because I saw many people gleefully swallowing up the scams they were fed but they would complain over decent investing perspectives. I think my channel and content would have been more popular if I was ripping off my viewers on a more regular basis. At least now, there is maybe a minor vindication for being anti-bitconnect.
Well, we could say we told you so,
as none of you that 'invested' in this ponzi, heeded the fact that we absolutely called this out as a scam a long time ago. 6th March to be precise.
If it is listed at Badbitcoin, it has been fully investigated by our systems and our team, and we are confident in our conclusion.
http://badbitcoin.org/thebadlist/
I'd love to interview someone from Bad Bitcoin on my podcast !
Great job, keep exposing these scammers
Thanks for your work.
Great job!
I knew it, my friend he send me a link to sign up i did but i didn't activate my account because i'm not comfortable in BCC and yesterday he send message to me that don't put your money in BCC i told him i didn't even activated my account.
"I think my channel and content would have been more popular if I was ripping off my viewers on a more regular basis."
Perhaps, but those like myself follow you because of your drive to maintain as much objectivity as possible when evaluating coins, their tech, and potential adoption. We cannot be tempted by these scams, not even once. Keep doing what you do, Ted. You know the payoff is far greater.
I know. I have a different caliber of viewer and I appreciate it.
Besides, as I believe Emerson said, paraphrasing "the world turns to glass for the wrongdoer." It's Transparent. At every moment in our lives there is some little temptation or other, some corner or other to cut and the sum total of it all becomes our living reality. The Strait and Narrow is for the long run. Tread the path, trudge on and eventually Truth will win the day, to your great joy.
I stayed out of paycoin, and I stayed out of this one as well. Most of the ICOs are scams as well, massive valuations with almost nothing to show for it other than lofty promises, fancy graphics and a white paper.
Even established coins like DASH have a somewhat questionable history (early premine), but I suppose that is a matter of opinion.
I personally think Dash's launch may be a scam. You see, they did not do an ICO to avoid US laws... but if you throw a bug in the code that lets the founders launch it and mine it themselves for a few hours and accumulate a huge amount, it is like they had an ICO. That's how I view it. Maybe it was a bug even, whatever the case Evan owns some Dash and I prefer that as an investor because it gives him skin in the game to see Dash succeed. I actually do not like projects where the devs have no stake in the system... it actually makes zero sense to operate on that model. It's dangerous if the developers work for free, they could make more profits shorting a coin and putting a bug in the code, or various other issues with centralized development.
You're not the only one. Many people feel that DASH was launched unfairly by Evan, but with all the price pumps, most investors just turned a blind eye and looked the other way.
What is not a scam in your opinion?
just keep calm , bitconnect will come back
its just in maintenance for 2 days:)
I think it will come back. Just like the Greek Banking system came back... capital restrictions on withdrawals. If they change the rules, provide an excuse, and keep people depositing more money into the system, they'll get even richer. No reason for them not to come back. They might screw over 50% of the accounts when they come back, and if half the people lose their wallets and funds for "exploiting" the system, the rest of the people will keep dumping money into a sinking ship.
I think the real issue I have with this whole thing is the pervasive stupidity I see people engaging in. I am fine with casinos existing. Saying the odds are in your favor though and people believing it is where I am baffled by the phenomena of people dumping into Bitconnect.
"I think the real issue I have with this whole thing is the pervasive stupidity I see people engaging in."
Totally agree. It is mind boggling. There are so many promising cryptos out there I don't understand how a coin like this gets oxygen. The market cap on this one is beyond belief.
The biggest issue for me is when these things go down it reflects so badly on the entire crypto space. The mainstream media will have a field day with it and it hurts ALL cryptos.
Yes you saw it and called it out a while back. Great job!
I'm sure that is what every bitconnect "investor" is telling themselves right now.
Really ? the bomb is dropping already? Way sooner than I thought, thank you all of you @crypto-investor, @badbitcoin... all of you raised the flag a while I go, I confess that I was seriously considering a month ago ¨investing ¨ in this mafia, and thank you to you all I did not .... let´s see what happens with all this. I hope the blockchain community as a whole is not hurt by this. And like you pointed out a serious learning expirience for the ¨famous¨ crypto Youtubers that are promoting this like hamburguers
Some people never learn there simply is no such thing as fast/easy money. If someone is pitching it, your scam radar should be going off and it should be loud and clear, but many folks unfortunately are sucked into things like this.
This is why I appreciate your analysis. You provide a very straight forward and honest assessment of the market with a sound technical and fundamental approach and explain why you feel the way you do. You provide incredible value and I really appreciate what you do man. One thing I was taught growing up was, "you can't fake character", your deeds tell the only story that needs told.
this is wild, I was just getting ready to get started with bitconnect. Thankfully I didn't
Fantastic post Ted - appreciated your commentary and warnings. Also liked that @badbitcoin turned up here - learned a lot tonight.
Resteemed to help warn others to the hazards of cryptocurrency.
SirKnight.
I have a small amount in bitconnect, and have been withdrawing any interest instead of reinvesting it, now today I had some interest and tried to with withdraw it, the withdrawl took forever and didn't go through, the bitcoin is still in my account so I tried to withdraw it again and bitconnect said my bitcoin value is zero!! wtf!!!!, so I went to support but you can't send an email because they are backlogged. I am lucky I got 50% of my investment back so far. So they are not processing transfers out the scam appears to be falling apart BCC will be zero soon for sure!!
wow!
I remember actually ASKING you SPECIFICLY about bit connect when I found out about it. You told me pretty confidently that it was a scam and looks like you were right!
Glad I trusted you and a couple other reliable people and did not get involved!
If I wasn't already in support of you I surely would be now!
Great content. Will make it a point to check in on your posts!
SteemON!
Love your posts man, I appreciate that you don't just throw stuff out there but actually get solid information and facts and then post it. Cheers for that
@crypto-investor, many investors had no idea it was a scam or didn't want to see the red flags. It's the major promoters of this scam that let character and reputation fall to the wayside by promoting the scam. Sad so many people will get hurt while a few laugh all the way to the bank.
Well, from the wording of the statement, it seems that the withdrawals could be due to a bug in their software. A similar thing happened to Ripple customers at CoinPayments a few months back, where hackers were able to withdraw more XRP from certain accounts than what was held on balance.
That may be true but it doesn't take away that the guarantee it gives on returns is what makes it scammy. Madoff ran his Ponzi for 15 years to the tune of billions and tricked some of the smartest people in the world, yet it was because the compounding interest he provided, kept more coming. I'm sure Bitconnect will be back. I just believe there will be a day of reckoning. For everyone's sake, I hope I'm wrong.
Ohh, I fully agree. There's no way in hell you can sustain those type of returns for any length of time.
It all depends on how volatile BTC will be...the BTC volatility has been and will be decreasing over time and as a result the rate of interest of BCC will be decreasing too.
check my post on btc volatility and bcc rate of interest:
https://steemit.com/cryptocurrency/@ka82/bitconnect-investment
they are coming back phewww
One hypothetical question:
Suppose SEC and gov. allowed all banks to trade on Bitcoin & crypto currencies with the money you put in your savings or checking accounts. How much do you think the banks would make daily percentage-wise?
They would lose, by the time they finished dumping into the bitcoin bubble, they'd ride bitcoin down 50%. Just on the hype, bitcoin would soar to 100k, and then we would all ride it down to 50k when the event happened. They'd lose money. Bubbles are bubbles. The bitcoin bubble is just one where we are early to the party. This does not mean it is some magical investment mechanism where if the whole world dumps into it, it somehow never goes down. In 1929, they began believing the stock market could never crash, so they would borrow huge sums to invest and leverage up to 5X. Markets force crashes in the end.
I published a new article on bitconnect:
https://steemit.com/cryptocurrency/@ka82/can-bitconnect-s-trading-be-legitimate-sustainable
My point was that banks would be probably making the same if not more on trading in bitcoin as what bcc is doing right now!
Of course it will burst! I didn't say it can't be a bubble, it has most of the characters of bubble...but what if it gets to an inflection point that people actually start using it as medium of exchange rather than converting it to paper money? it's not stock after all the you should cash it to be able to use the money.
I agree with you.
Do you think you can make me $1/day on average if I give you $100 to trade on BTC volatility? While you keep 2/3 of the profit (i.e. $2)?
They don't trade bitcoin volatility with the full $100. In their latest conference, they outlined how they invest. 50% gets invested in BCC and Bitcoin, not trading volatility. Then a portion of the other 50% gets put into a trading bot, according to them. I believe there is a trading bot, it is their internal market platform, they probably are the only ones enabled to do volatility trading on it, which is a legit thing. While this is profitable, there are risks, and 1% a day would still produce diminished returns. Maybe on 1 mil, you could get 1% a day, if it was amazing. Then when you try to volatility trade with 50 mil, the percentage should drop. The BCC system never dropped the percentage. Anyway, they already admitted it was a ponzi when they told us 50% is never traded by the bot, but is just a speculation on the price of BCC and BTC. If the price of BCC or BTC crashes 50%, how would they ever repay depositors? They couldn't, since the lending wallets never diminish.
Can you send me the link on their conference or if they have a youtube video?
what makes a difference 1 million or $100? 1 percent is one percent! If you look at their platform when you lend there're boxes at the bottom which say Lenders, Traders and the more you put in the numbers in those boxes increase. I don't think they have the trading bot but people (traders) who actually trade on bitcoin.
I'm not sure how or if they would repay the depositors if prices crashes but my understanding is that they might be using some exotic swaps in BTC.
Pls feel free to check my research on btc volatility vs bcc rate of return and let me know your thoughts:
https://steemit.com/cryptocurrency/@ka82/bitconnect-investment
So what are you guys going to say when the site us back?
I will say it is a scam. Read the whitepaper I wrote for them: https://steemit.com/bitconnect/@crypto-investor/the-bitconnect-whitepaper-maths-of-a-ponzi
When they open the site back up, I doubt they will enable all accounts. Their press release eludes to the concept they want to blame certain people for an exploit. The exploit being those people are withdrawing money rather than leaving it in the ponzi. I expect they will keep certain accounts banned, and enable other new accounts, and enable profitable accounts. They can keep their ponzi going quite a while if they are willing to screw over a subset of their customer base, while making excuses.
Where did they run to? The scheme may continue, but just curious since their operations have resumed. Seems like jumping to a premature conclusion without proper confirmation.
what you have to say for your self now? thats all some ppl does spread bad news and don't take the time to educated them self on what Bitconnect really is, this is so sad :)