So after reading the 90 pages of this thread for the last 2 days (yes I'm a bit crazy), so I could forge myself an informed opinion before deciding if this coin is really worth something or not, I can sum-up the facts, good and bad as follow:
- The devs are unknown (but so were Bitcoin's at its beginning)
- They didn't provide any whitepaper (Bitcoin's original whitepaper was very simple itself and didn't go into details)
- The
GitHub source page is a joke (only a few cosmetic commits and no activity/update)
- However a lot of private dev has been going on (wallet clients for all major consumer platforms, very functional exchange with top security, smartphone applications for Android and iPhone, mining pool…).
- They claim to be an open source platform but much of is completely closed…
- The privately developed software is of high quality.
- The main dev call himself
Satao Nakamoto (no comment)
- Devs acted unethically when they switched their lending platform abruptly from BTC to BCC to force people to invest in their new coin (it was in December 2016 if I remember well).
- They do have a
public blockchain.
- You can find many "news" article about bitconnect but they are all sponsored press releases.
- It looks like a Ponzi scheme, it smells like an MLM, and act as get rich quick scheme…
- OP doesn't reply to scam accusation anymore (they did in the beginning but gave little proof to alleviate these accusations).
- The coin is only sustainable if there is indeed a huge trading bot investing all the funds stored on their main exchange in btc/usd trading.
- When asked
how this bot was not taking any loss days after days, the OP answered that they save on past earnings to compensate for those bad days and distribute interest nonetheless saying that they do plan on improving their bot algorithm.
- There is no proof of the existence of this "volatility software" but as a dev myself I can imagine it to be perfectly plausible, given the volatility of bitcoin and the amount of btc they have gathered it's totally possible to generate the income necessary to support BCC economy model without using new investors' funds directly to pay the old ones (
this [promotional] video explains it).
- They're listed only on 5 small exchanges (CoinExchange.io, Crypto DAO, Livecoin, Novaexchange, TradeSatoshi) besides their own that encompass 90% of the volume exchange.
- When you invest on their platform you have to buy bcc using btc and then buy a lending plan in $ using the current market price of bcc on their exchange. The bigger the loan the bigger the bonus and the shorter the invested money is locked down.
- After the lock-down period is over you get your deposit back in $, you can reinvest it directly or you can convert them back to bcc at the current market value.
- When investing you get paid daily in $ that you can convert without fee to bcc at the market price as soon as you have $1. (The daily paid amount strictly follows the volatility software interest rate + any bonus obtained from the amount being loaned) .
- You can reinvest what you earn daily as soon as you have $100 thus benefiting from huge compound interests over time.
- The lowest withdrawal limit is 0.005 btc + 0.0007 fee
- They still don't allow withdrawal of BCH (but allow deposits(!) - unless the withdrawal option only appears when one does have BCH to withdraw…)
- They have a
roadmap and achieved every milestone of it on time so far delivering new features and causing scam accusators to disappear from this thread one after another (but this doesn't prove much).
- The value of the coin has
increased steadily over the past 8 months.
- People are getting paid so far so they do deliver (this doesn't exclude a Ponzi).
- They have implemented an anti-panic system on their exchange ("
volatility based circuit breaker") which was actually never mentioned in those 90 pages. (this is maybe why they avoid big exchanges…). This is quite innovative in my opinion and add self-regulation to the market preventing human emotions from destroying the currency.
- Their ad campaign are very aggressive and they plan to do more according to their roadmap (this support the Ponzi accusations)
- You can't buy anything real with this coin yet but they have been talking about a smart card and coming partnership with undisclosed companies. (so for now it's only speculation)
- They have made it so that one would want to keep their BCC instead of cashing them out in btc, in many subtle and clever ways…
- They seem to target small investors mainly (MLM campaign, very low investment entry possibilities, very low limits in withdrawals and transfers). Is it because it's easy to scam new investors or because they want to turn the table around? (Are the people behind it truly there for betterment of mankind and not to get rich themselves?)
- From what I understand they want people to use this coin as a way to pay for their daily needs but keep the majority of their shares in the system for as long as possible. They designed this as a long term investment with supposedly guaranteed daily returns.
- If bitconnect is not a scam the math tell that it would destroy standard economy as we know it… (taking all the money from the poor, investing it automatically and redistribute it evenly, in the long run money wouldn't be worth anything - is that possible? I might just be dreaming here…)
So in the end it all comes down to one real question: Is this trading bot real or not? This is what decides whether this is a scam or not… So this thread should focus on finding ways to answer this question. All other shady facts are not playing in their favor but apparently they clearly don't need to defend themselves given the coin current success so why would they bother? Maybe they just think that history will prove them right so they don't care.
What's clear though is that the people behind bitconnect.co are very clever in many ways…
I invested $100 to see how it goes (it was 7 days ago) and bought 3.5 BCC not currently invested. I still haven't decided if I want to risk more. But what I can tell from my short experience of their system is that they do have talented developers working for them so maybe this trading bot does exist but we should really focus on a way to prove that.
