Screenshot captured on 12:00 AM, 17 January (GMT)
While most major cryptocurrencies have seen a correction of 20-30%, Bitconnect has crashed over 90%, going as low as $19 and falling entirely out of the Top 100 in Coinmarketcap rankings. Pending confirmation, it also appears that the Bitconnect team have begun to execute a classic ponzi scheme exit strategy.
Twitter pundits and financial advisers alike have also been calling the imminent crash of the Bitconnect house of cards for years. It appears the past 48 hour market correction was the gust of wind it took to knock the cards down and for the orchestrated Bitconnect exit scam to become glaringly obvious.
I've been asked what I think about BitConnect. From the surface, seems like a classic ponzi scheme. I wouldn't invest in it and wouldn't recommend anyone else to.
I follow this rule of thumb:
"If it looks like a ????, walks like a ????, and quacks like a ????, then it's a ponzi." ????
— Charlie Lee [LTC] (@SatoshiLite) November 30, 2017
BitConnect really seems like a scam. an old school ponzi ... bad actors hurt the community. period. #bitcoin #ether
— Michael Novogratz (@novogratz) November 30, 2017
Bitcoin bull and hedge fund manager Michael Novogratz with similar sentiments
BITCONNECT TEAM CASHES OUT?
Screenshot of Bitconnect notice issued today on January 16th. Exact time unknown.
This appears to be a classic bait and switch – Bitconnect funds are released into individual investor’s wallet balances, but with limited liquidity and no false value proposition to sell the coin on.
BCC at. At the time of publishing, HitBTC was trading BCC at $16.80 down from ~$420 a mere day prior:
Long-time Bitconnect skeptic @bccponzi stated that this is the suspected Bitcoin wallet that the Bitconnect team have been cashing out of: https://www.walletexplorer.com/wallet/00000898df0aab75
As usual, when the house of cards comes crashing down, the people that get hurt are those at the bottom of the pecking order who just didn’t know any better.
Here is an example of the damage and hurt that is caused when due diligence is eschewed for false promises of quick gains and high yield investments:
One fear in the cryptocurrency community is that the BitConnect crash will appear to justify “nocoiner” claims of a Bitcoin or cryptocurrency bubble, failing to differentiate between or intentionally conflating censorship resistant stores of value and ponzi schemes.
Both points above highlight the importance of cryptocurrency education and combating misinformation.
Only through educating new and old adopters of cryptocurrency can they differentiate between true utility and scams, eventually streamlining the path to sustainable and healthy growth.
UPDATE 2 @ 1:00 AM GMT, 17 Jan: Bitconnect appears to be making a recovery in the HitBTC market. This is likely due to speculators hoping for an unlikely recovery and/or speculators possibly unaware that both the internal BCC exchange and “lending platform” have been shut down.
By Daniel Dalton via Crypto Insider
