Crypto currency Bitconnect (BCC) plunged from $321 to a tad over $35 today, a drop of more than 86% after regulators from state authorities issued cease and desist letters for unauthorized sale of securities. That’s right. Just because your shit is on the blockchain, that doesn’t mean you get to solicit your f#@king Ponzi scheme to people in America. State regulators will have something to say about that.
Via the company’s website, as per the reasons for shutting down.
The reason for halt of lending and exchange platform has many reasons as follow: The continuous bad press has made community members uneasy and created a lack of confidence in the platform.We have received two Cease and Desist letters, one from the Texas State Securities Board, and one from the North Carolina Secretary of State Securities Division.
These actions have become a hindrance for the legal continuation of the platform. Outside forces have performed DDos attacks on platform several times and have made it clear that these will continue. These interruptions in service have made the platform unstable and have created more panic inside the community.
Price action.
What did Bitconnect do? They quite literally ran a Ponzi scheme. Look at one of their brochures, promising investors 40% returns, PER MONTH.
Via Tech Crunch:
Many in the cryptocurrency community have openly accused Bitconnnect of running a Ponzi scheme, including Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin.The platform was powered by a token called BCC (not to be confused with BCH, or Bitcoin Cash), which is essentially useless now that the trading platform has shut down. In the last The token has plummeted more than 80% to about $37, down from over $200 just a few hours ago.
If you aren’t familiar with the platform, Bitconnect was an anonymously-run site where users could loan their cryptocurrency to the company in exchange for outsized returns depending on how long the loan was for. For example, a $10,000 loan for 180 days would purportedly give you ~40% returns each month, with a .20% daily bonus.
Bitconnect also had a thriving multi-level referral feature, which also made it somewhat akin to a pyramid scheme with thousands of social media users trying to drive signups using their referral code.
The platform said it generated returns for users using Bitconnnect’s trading bot and “volatility trading software”, which usually averaged around 1% per day. Of course profiting from market fluctuations and volatility is a legitimate trading strategy, and one used by many hedge funds and institutional traders.
But Bitconnect’s promise (and payment) of outsized and guaranteed returns led many to believe it was a ponzi scheme that was paying out existing loan interest with newly pledged loans. The requirement of having BCC to participate in the lending program led to a natural spike in demand (and price) of BCC.
In less than a year the currency went from being worth less than a dollar (with a market cap in the millions) to a all-time high of ~$430.00 with a market cap above $2.6B.
Lenders into the Bitconnect Exchange have revealed the company is closing out accounts, issuing BCC in exchange for their dollars — which is causing the price to plummet.
Bitconnect is officially closing up. They sent me 33 BCC for my $11k+ in loans. Worth $6600 and dropping by the second. Their exchange is down so the only option is to send the BCC to an external exchange.
— LifeByAdam (@LifeByAdam1) January 16, 2018
https://twitter.com/LifeByAdam1/status/953383750179741696
Over on Reddit, there is a subreddit dedicated to this Ponzi scheme, which has just gone private — likely due to an influx of schadenfreude. Suicide watch is in effect.
This just about sums it up.
And then there’s this guy — popular Youtuber, Trevor James, who rose to fame because of Bitconnect, telling people he’s buying Bitconnect now at these prices. He has since taken down that video and is in hiding.
https://twitter.com/BitcoinTre/status/953472775397789697
You only lose when you sell.
— Trevon James (@BitcoinTre) January 17, 2018
Everything about it screams another opporjoonity to get fleeced to me.
I wonder if this is the cryptocurrency the fellow galen spoke of this morning was invested in and lost all?
Some bodies got screwed and some bodies did the screwing.
Complete drag!
I don’t know, Katie. He just said “Bitcoin.”
I think a circus is about to be unleashed. People don’t easily accept losing their money.
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Katie- this was a ponzi scheme that people in the community identified months ago. There should be plenty of vids about bitconnect on youtube.
For the uninitiated, there is BTC (bitcoin) and all the other crypto currencies. Many of these other currencies were just set up to make money. There is even a jew coin that I forget the name of. It basically tithes some of the money to some huge corrupt jewish establishment.
Bitcoin came first in 2009. None knew that people would ascribe value to it eventually, so it was decently distributed among nerds and people who were unhappy with usury and looking for alternatives. Since the other coins were created after people figured out that bitcoin would be worth something, many coins were created with a pre-mine where the creators ended up with a large percentage of the coin. Some say that there will never be another crypto currency as fairly distributed as bitcoin, even though the majority of bitcoin is indeed owned by a fairly small group of people.
Hope this helps!
Thanks, it does help. I also realize this is not bitcoin that tanked.
aaaaaand…..it’s gone
Poof.
Was that the episode with the Federal Reserve roulette wheel with the dead chicken? I laughed util I had cramps over that one if it was.
nolan
I’ve said for many years, “greed will bite you in the ass”.
For the scam to be complete they still need a really good “dead cat bounce” sucker rally to pick the bones clean of the people they’ve already cleaned out.
You really can’t make this stuff up.
nolan
Told ya.
This is no surprise to me, and I warned people about this scam long ago.
I also told ’em to buy gold when it was $300 per ounce, and they didn’t listen to that either.
I have absolutely no money in the Bitcoin stupidity race, and I knew the crash was coming when the hype started increasing recently. When you read one story after another about all the people getting rich on Bitcoin (or any other “investment”) it’s time to cash out.
Reconsider. There will only ever be 21 million bitcoin. If it continues to exist at all, it will be more valuable that you can possibly imagine 🙂
If bitcoin does fail, I foresee that we will be VERY screwed because cryptos are here to stay and most of them are unfair or flat out created by the establishment.
For Mark Koernke I found a movie made in 2013 called “How I live now.”
Very graphic and somewhat realistic with no clearly defined enemy. Fill in the blank for enemy.
Plot
An American girl, sent to the English countryside to stay with relatives, finds love and purpose while fighting for her survival as war envelops the world around her.
Review: How I Live Now is movie about endurance of love and the human spirit amid London nuclear calamity.
Link to the movie. I am a bit shaky after watching it and to have learned earlier today that my cancer is back. Life is a crap shoot sometimes.
God bless you Mark, Don, Joe, Henry, and all the others!
http://womovie.co/watch-how-i-live-now-2013-online-full-free-hd
my thoughts are with you, Ted
Never met you Ted, but sending love and courage.
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Prayers for you TED and thanks for the link to a great movie.