Or is it?
It's not all fun and games when it comes to the cryptosphere.
We have been around here for a while fellow steemians, and we like to keep tabs on whats happening in the market - especialy scams.
We did some research and tried to understand what Bitconnect is all about.
From youtubers to investors, it seems Bitconnect is gaining a lot of traction, because...
"BitConnect Coin is an open source, peer-to-peer, community driven decentralized cryptocurrency that allow people to store and invest their wealth in a non-government controlled currency, and even earn a substantial interest on investment."
That entire sentence was taken from their website - but is it true? Do they really stand for what they say?
From websites to vlogs, we did our research on scams related to the cryptosphere and we have come to share with you some interesting findings- we'll name 3 of them!
Point 1 - There are lots of Ponzi schemes/Scam sites berating that they will give you "1000% returns" in a couple of days to months - which is down right impossible most times, even in the cryptosphere.
Point 2 - The Timeline for HYIP scams - High Yield High Payment - is 125 days before folding.
https://www.coindesk.com/research-11-million-lost-bitcoin-scams-since-2009/
One can deduce from that article the average lifespan of a HYIP Scam and that usually for Bitcoin related scams - there is an average lifespan of 37 days.
Point 3 - Exposure is a very bad thing for scams, even when it comes to the cryptocurrency universe - Things get found twice as fast thanks to the Internet.
Keeping these 3 points in mind let us show you our reasoning:
Point 1 - With Bitconnect you can buy the cryptocurrency in itself and wait for it to reach new values or trade it to make profit - which is very different from actually getting 1000% gains on something - or you can use
Bitconnect lending to earn daily interest on the money you earned, which works as shown in this image:
In average, they give back to you 1% of your lent money daily over the duration of the lending period - which if you put some thought into it isn't really much.
Suppose you lend them 1010 USD. You will have your money locked for around 239 days - kinda like a savings account in traditional banks isn't it? - after which, you will see an increase in approximately 239% of your inicial investment which will leave you at circa 2413 USD.
Gee guys, but don't most Bitcoin related scams get busted after 40 days or so?
Indeed they do, and thus we come to our precious point 2!
Point 2 - A research on Bitconnect showed us that is has been around since November 2016 - as can be seen in this snapshot https://web.archive.org/web/20161109043336/https://bitconnect.co/ - so it has been around for 395 days at least!
This offers some security, since they are up running - with some minor bumps in the road as expected from almost everyone.
Point 3 - We're not even getting into Bitconnect getting exposure, if its being talked about in Portugal, the information about Bitconnect is almost certainly around everywhere - We'll just leave you with one of the most controversial youtubers that's spreading the word in the following video:
It is our personal opinion that Bitconnect does not have the markings of a scam or anything of the sort - however you should do your own research and if you're willing, we'd be glad to have a debate on it!
Full Disclosure: At the time of writting, we hold no relationship with Bitconnect whatsoever, but we will be investing 100 USD after our research, for experimentation and yields sake - and see just how far the rabbit hole goes.
Also, before we leave to get back to researching - a bonus about Bitconnect that we have found hysterical :
Be advised that after the 0:09s mark there is a pitch distortion which is very loud and not so fun.
This time there is no tipping jar- instead we are going to give you a bonus for joining Bitconnect.co through our referral link.
For each of you that uses our referral link and makes an investment in Bitconnect.co, we will award you with $25 BCC directly to the account that made the investment through our referral link!