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BitConnect Closes Exchange as States Warn of Unregulated Sales

(www.bloomberg.com)
389 points JumpCrisscross | 2 comments | 17 Jan 18 01:04 UTC | HN request time: 0.54s | 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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JumpCrisscross ◴[17 Jan 18 02:03 UTC] No.16164865[source]▶
> Famous Youtubers and other individuals with influence convinced hundreds of people to put their money into BitConnect in order to profit off of referrals

If you lost money in this scheme and are in the United States or Canada, contact your state securities regulator [1]. Mention any such referral sources. Those individuals may be liable for securities fraud under state and federal law.

If you're in the United States, send a copy to the SEC [2]. If you lost more than a token amount, I would also recommend contacting an attorney.

[1] http://www.nasaa.org/about-us/contact-us/contact-your-regula...

[2] https://www.sec.gov/complaint/select.shtml

Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer. This is not legal advice.

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drexlspivey ◴[17 Jan 18 09:05 UTC] No.16166523[source]▶
Most of them took down their videos by now
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1. lhl ◴[17 Jan 18 10:46 UTC] No.16166920[source]▶
@Bitfinexed [1], who tracks all kinds of scams (the Tether one is going to be the real doozy when that unravels) has been diligently saving Bitconnect videos, tweets, etc. He is pseudononymous, so the question now is how to effectively get these (apparently) hundreds of gigs of videos archived/shared. [2] I can't imagine he's the only one to have thought to do this, though. Bitconnect was simply too blatant of a skeezy ponzi for no one to have bothered tracking down who all these people were...

[1] https://twitter.com/Bitfinexed

[2] https://twitter.com/Bitfinexed/status/953510174244986880

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2. toomuchtodo ◴[17 Jan 18 14:49 UTC] No.16168263[source]▶
They should get in touch with Jason Scott or Archive Team in general to get them in the Internet Archive, or upload them to the Internet Archive themselves.

EDIT: I don't have Twitter, if someone wouldn't mind, could they connect @Bitfinexed to @textfiles?