The BitConnect saga seems to have finally fallen apart this afternoon with the following announcement:
Settling customer lending balances in Bitconnect Coin was the endgame the company must have always envisioned as their "out" from the very beginning. Bitconnect was a US$1 billion+ Ponzi scheme that thrived on two things:
- A rising Bitcoin price to gather attention
- New investors to continue pumping in money
By creating their own coin (BitConnect Coin or BCC) they created an artificial market by making people buy BCC with Bitcoin in order to lend BCC back to their "lending platform" to generate all the crazy returns that you've heard all about. Now the joke is on everyone who stayed in BitConnect up to today, because they have announced they are shutting down their exchange and lending platforms and "transferring all your lending wallet balance to your BitConnect wallet balance at 363.62 USD" - this is the "out" they always knew they had and hence why BitConnect created an artificial market for their BCC coin which should have been called Ponzi Coin. Now everyone who was "lending" money through BitConnect is stuck with BCC coins which are NOT Bitcoins, and in all likelihood BCCs are completely worthless now because there is no demand for them. Only supply. This is how a Ponzi scheme ends in the 2018 world.
This is the latest quote for BCC from coinmarketcap.com as the avalanche of selling hits:
I will say that the BitConnect scam was extremely clever, i'm sure Bernie Madoff is jealous. They fooled a lot of people for much longer than I could have possibly imagined.
UPDATE: One hour after I published this post BitConnect Coin has crashed -85%, wiping out more than $1 billion in market valuation in one swoop
