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BitConnect Closes Exchange as States Warn of Unregulated Sales

(www.bloomberg.com)
389 points JumpCrisscross | 3 comments | 17 Jan 18 01:04 UTC | HN request time: 0.505s | source
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ve55 ◴[17 Jan 18 01:56 UTC] No.16164829[source]▶
For those unaware, Bitconnect was a Bitcoin-based ponzi-scheme that had operated 'successfully' for quite some time. I don't say 'ponzi' as an insult in the way some do for cryptocurrencies, it was quite literally just a bare-bones ponzi scheme, where you deposit your money (Bitcoin) on their website, buy their token, 'lock' your funds for some amount of time, and you are promised very high interest rates while encouraged to re-invest your returns.

What has happened today is Bitconnect has closed the exchange on their website, and so users flocked to some of the only other exchanges (of dubious reputation, since no reputable exchange wanted to list the BitConnect coin) in order to sell their now-worthless tokens, resulting in losses of around 90% today: https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/bitconnect/

Many famous Youtubers and other individuals with influence convinced hundreds of people to put their money into BitConnect in order to profit off of referrals, leading to a lot of unfortunate losses and a lot of delusion and misinformation among devoted investors. The general sentiment towards those that lost money due to BitConnect has been a mocking attitude in the cryptocurrency investment communities, as BitConnect has been referred to by many as a blatant ponzi scheme for months.

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1. dbcooper ◴[17 Jan 18 02:21 UTC] No.16164929[source]▶
>other exchanges (of dubious reputation

Yeah, HitBTC has the most volume, and it has a terrible reputation. See all the reports of "maintenance issues" when a coin traded there can be sold at a higher price on another exchange.

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2. bringtheaction ◴[17 Jan 18 08:57 UTC] No.16166493[source]▶
HitBTC sucks less than a lot of other exchanges IME. It's not my favorite exchange but it's decent enough that I rank it pretty highly.

I have noticed that if you look at reviews for different exchanges, most will have a large amount of negative reviews. Some deserve it but I suspect that a lot of the reviews are not real - competing exchanges may have paid someone to write fake negative reviews.

Not saying HitBTC is the best or anything.

As an exercise, try this: Take the name of your absolute favorite exchange, combine it with the word "review" (sans quotation marks) and do a Google search for that. Look through the results.

3. saas_co_de ◴[17 Jan 18 13:36 UTC] No.16167740[source]▶
Any exchange trading this crap should probably be avoided like the plague.