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BitConnect Closes Exchange as States Warn of Unregulated Sales

(www.bloomberg.com)
389 points JumpCrisscross | 1 comments | 17 Jan 18 01:04 UTC | HN request time: 0.304s | 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. bonestamp2 ◴[17 Jan 18 18:35 UTC] No.16170456[source]▶
> Bitconnect was a Bitcoin-based ponzi-scheme

Do you know that as a fact? I'm not trying to defend bitconnect, I just think it's dangerous living in a world where people state things as facts that have not been proven.

People often cite the high rate of return from their trading bot as "proof" that they're a ponzi, but I don't buy that because run my own bitcoin trading bot and the returns are more than triple bitconnect's average.

People much smarter than I who are running the same trading bot get even higher returns than I do. I think bitconnect's return rate was low because they were skimming the returns, which explains why they would take other people's money even though their bot works... because they can make even more by providing it as a service.