Bitconnect : learning from the past. How is it possible to invest life savings ?

[cheezcarls]

Remember the big Ponzi Bitconnect and learn from the past.

At the height of the Bitcoin hype in late 2017, one company in the cryptocurrency sector was almost as much the talk of the town as its illustrious representative.

BitConnect (then the sector's seventh-largest capitalization) was at its peak on December 28, 2017, and one BCC (BitConnect's stock symbol) was traded for $477. Bitconnect's market capitalization soared to $3 billion. But on January 17, everything came crashing down: the site abruptly shut down and thousands of investors were left out in the cold.

Some had put their life savings into it  

A classic Ponzi pyramid: a fraudulent financial scheme in which customers' investments are remunerated by funds provided by new entrants. BitConnect then exchanges bitcoins for its BCC "cryptocurrency", while promising a return on investment at a fixed rate over several months. The more money you leave locked up, the higher the return. In this type of scheme, if the scam isn't discovered, it eventually comes to light when too many investors claim their stakes at the same time. This is what happened at the end of January 2018, when most cryptocurrencies experienced a severe correction.

"Influencers:": BitConnect created a sponsorship and affiliation system. Influential Twitter and YouTube personalities advise beginners to give BitConnect a try, while pocketing a 7% commission.


This short documentary shows people being scammed => https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thMP0ZpGlDw

I remember that at the time I couldn't understand how you could exchange btc for this unknown currency  (BCC). I didn't understand why people were so trustfull in staking for so long. Then I didn't understand how you could put your life's savings into a single cryptocurrency (unless it is bitcoin, that's my opinion).

And yet it's happening all over again. People don't seem to learn from the past.

Never ever invest all of your life savings. Do not go all-in. Better to diversify and only put an extra amount of cash that you can afford to lose.

I got introduced a bit into Bitconnect last 2017 when BTC was on a hype bull run thanks to ETH and ICOs. However, I've decided not to invest into it because I am not a fan of joining MLMs anymore (despite I was into network marketing for years before I gave up and started exploring into Bitcoin, altcoins, etc.).

It was not for me and good thing that I did not invest a dime there in Bitconnect despite that the one who referred me back then keeps following me up to invest. I did not listen and it's one of the best early decisions that I have made even if my crypto knowledge is still on a beginner level due to the fact that it implements the MLM concept.

[lionheart78]

And yet it's happening all over again. People don't seem to learn from the past.

Things keep on repeating because new people to the industry are naive, lazy, and greedy.  We all know that not many people are familiar with things so with their inexperience, they failed to determine which one is a scam or legit.  Others are too lazy to research their investment and just rely on hype and buzz created by news and influencers so they often fail to know that they are entering traps.  Worst those people who had experienced getting scammed failed to learn their lesson and keep on blindly trusting people that offers them too good-to-be-true deals and were possibly too greedy to stop and think of the situation they are getting into.

[bitbollo]

...
People don't seem to learn from the past.

there will always some new users who fall on these traps due ignorance, greed, stupidity.
These users will be always ready to finance these fraudulent activities...

Some years ago I started reporting bitcoin-themed HYIPs in the scam accusation section, but I realize that this is practically useless... new sites are published literally every hour.... and most of all...

Who invests in these sites:
- is often aware that these are scams and wants to "risk"
- doesn't know that it's a scam and they will never go looking if it's really a scam (posting scam accusation is just a waste of time since all people that read the section are pretty aware that these are scam... people that need this information will never search here or just "don't want believe it")
- always defends the nature of these projects even there is a clear evidence of scam activity.

The history of scams? ... "endless"!

[Becassine]

I didn't understand why people were so trustfull in staking for so long. Then I didn't understand how you could put your life's savings into a single cryptocurrency (unless it is bitcoin, that's my opinion).

I don't understand how someone can invest their entire life savings in anything, and that includes Bitcoin. Because although Bitcoin from an investment perspective looks very promising, the future has always been and will be uncertain, and therefore diversification is something that only makes sense.

And yet it's happening all over again. People don't seem to learn from the past.

Only intelligent people learn from other people's mistakes, others choose the hard way and learn from their own mistakes, but that's something we can't change. This is something that works for scammers, because they prosper precisely because of such people and the fact that today anyone can "invent" cryptocurrency, list it on some CEX and claim that this is the next big thing.

I misspoke, as many of you have noted. Of course you have to diversify your investments, I meant that if I wanted to all-in, then I'd choose bitcoin over a new crypto, even if it's in coinmarketcap's listing and especially if I can't withdraw it when I want to.

We can see that people are always ready to invest in anything and continue to listen to anyone: these people, influencers, on Youtube and other social media, get huge commissions for promoting any shitcoin.

Fatman recounted on Twitter how he earned 3.45 BTC on Twitter and 2 BTC on Discord in just in two tweets (he later repaid). He wanted to show how simple it was to scam someone by promising a crazy return.

I think it's important to remember Bitconnect, Madoff and the others to learn not to fall into these traps. But it's true, as someone mentioned above, that cautious people who really check out the scams section already know about them.

[gurunanakji777]

Most newcomers fall into the trap when influencers describe the next Bitcoin as a reason to hold onto it, buy it, and claim that such an opportunity won't come again. They set this kind of trap to make newbies think, "Why not invest all my money and quickly become a millionaire?" However, the reality is quite the opposite. Therefore, before investing, newbies should thoroughly research on their own rather than relying on others' opinions Otherwise, some investors will continue to fall into such Ponzi schemes.

[mirakal]

And yet it's happening all over again. People don't seem to learn from the past.

Things keep on repeating because new people to the industry are naive, lazy, and greedy.  We all know that not many people are familiar with things so with their inexperience, they failed to determine which one is a scam or legit.  Others are too lazy to research their investment and just rely on hype and buzz created by news and influencers so they often fail to know that they are entering traps.  Worst those people who had experienced getting scammed failed to learn their lesson and keep on blindly trusting people that offers them too good-to-be-true deals and were possibly too greedy to stop and think of the situation they are getting into.

People get scammed again and again mostly because of their greed and ignorance. And so they become more gullible especially to those persons whom they feel has more authority or having high positions believing that they can never do harm to them. With that mindset, scammers will easily take advantage on them leaving them regretting in the end. And this scamming will never put to an end if there are still people who are still not afraid to be scammed.

[abel1337]

Most newcomers fall into the trap when influencers describe the next Bitcoin as a reason to hold onto it, buy it, and claim that such an opportunity won't come again. They set this kind of trap to make newbies think, "Why not invest all my money and quickly become a millionaire?" However, the reality is quite the opposite. Therefore, before investing, newbies should thoroughly research on their own rather than relying on others' opinions Otherwise, some investors will continue to fall into such Ponzi schemes.

Mostly newbies are the one who are getting scammed. Remember last bull market, so many influencers pulled their followers into investing on the project they are promoting. This is also what is happening on infuencers who promote ponzi as an easy money machine. I've seen influencers flexing their money that they got from ponzi/projects everytime they want to pull people in investing into it. People just loves easy money, a person who has no financial litteracy was the one who always seek for this too good to be true opportunity but ended up being scammed. This bitconnect incident was the proof of it.

[gurunanakji777]

Some individuals quickly fall into traps where grand dreams are presented to them. They believe that these dreams will turn into reality, but in general, this rarely happens, and we all know this. However, newbies often fall into these traps and, driven by greed, they even invest their life savings in the hope of substantial returns. That's why I never trust any influencer or signal provider. We should equip ourselves with knowledge about the market so that we can analyze it, make decisions, and determine what is beneficial or detrimental to us. This is the only way to avoid such scams and also to steer clear of MLM-type projects that are launched in the cryptocurrency market. It's important not to take risks by investing in these projects and to stay away from them.

[coin-investor]

I remember that at the time I couldn't understand how you could exchange btc for this unknown currency  (BCC). I didn't understand why people were so trustfull in staking for so long. Then I didn't understand how you could put your life's savings into a single cryptocurrency (unless it is bitcoin, that's my opinion).

And yet it's happening all over again. People don't seem to learn from the past.

We all learned our lesson here and I guess this has to happen for us to learn and be wise in our investments, Ponzi schemes, and Multi-level marketing should have no place here in our community, we should be vigilant because there are so many newly launched altcoins with the same features like Bitconnectcoin, there are many new investors now that are not aware f Bitconnectcoin, we should teach and urge these people to research the past.
The past has so many things to teach us, to be wise investors we have to look back so we look in the future and further.

[TheUltraElite]

I was just starting my bitcoin journey and used to be a regular troll in the Primedice chatbox (some days those were ). There a lot of low income country people were buzzing all day and night about BCC and it was a regular topic of heated discussions. Some country users had set up referral chains with a long downlines just for getting more users into this HYIP.

Which brings me to my point, these projects dont just gain ground because of Greed, but also from word of mouth from someone you might know and you might trust, so you take their word at face value never checking the project yourself.

Hence we come to the solution - always verify, never trust anybody in cryptocurrency when investing your own money.

[Marykeller]

Only when you have a wrong mentality about crypto is when you will easily think that investing in it with your life savings will give you the financial freedom you are longing for for long.

I don't know to describe how the mindset of people goes when they hear about a project that promises them a good return. Is it that it will make them rich forever that makes them lose guard of their mentality ability on what crypto investment should be, that they should invest with their spare money and not go in at once without taking precautionary measures of what happens if the highly rewarding projects turn out to be Ponzi scams.

The number of scams keeps increasing because many people refuse to learn that project that promises high returns needs to be avoided but greed won't allow many to do that because of what they have to imagine if they are to invest in them

[lalabotax]

And yet it's happening all over again. People don't seem to learn from the past.

Some of themmay exactly learn from the past, especially from their own experienc.Like what happenedto their inevstment on Bitconnect.
But right now, there are many new comers who are newly investing again in the cyrpto. And they may not learn from other bad exeriences. Thiswill be a cylce again and again