We need to talk about Onecoin.

Onecoin has been around for some time now. My question is - if it’s a scam, why is it still going on? Onecoin first arrived in 2014. It promised to be something super awesome, make its followers super rich and revolutionize everything and anything. This is what they promise:
“OneCoin empowers millions of people by providing borderless, low-cost financial transactions and connecting them to the financial world. OneCoin has developed a loyal, global customer base of millions of people in over 195 countries and six continents and is independent of governments”

Sounds cool? Revolutionary? Reminds you of something?

I have been asked this question a lot recently - Should I invest in Onecoin? I've done some research into it and my honest opinion is no and here's why:

Onecoin appears to be counter to what a cryptocurrency is - decentralized and open-source. Onecoin appears to have barriers to entry, either in the form of a financial transaction or handing over of personal information, which wouldn’t make it open source in the strictest sense. Also, I would not classify 3 or 4 servers as decentralized, most traditional banks and payment method operators run some form of fail safe system which would consist of multiple server locations, this would not make them “decentralized”.

The sheer lack of information on their website is troubling - nothing regarding the nature of the algorithm and nothing regarding the people behind onecoin.After doing some research, it would appear that the people involved have been accused of fraudulent activity in the past.Other things ring alarm bells: the WHOIS registration details are set to private, with the website itself based out of Sofia, Bulgaria.
If any company, especially one that is focusing on finance (and what appears to be multi-level marketing), is not completely upfront about the identity of those in charge, I would walk away.

The “Aurum” coins aspect of OneCoin looks like such BS - they claim it’s backed by 1mg of gold, stored in a vault in Dubai. But then there’s nothing to back those claims up. It’s like me walking into a shop, going to the counter to pay and handing them a piece of paper, with “There’s €50 worth of gold in a vault in Dubai that is now linked to this piece of paper” scrawled on it in crayon.Personally, this whole thing looks like nothing more than a ponzi scheme and it’s a shame that people are using the “cryptocurrency” name as a buzzword to generate interest, when in the end, it’ll serve to dirty that name.

Onecoin has since changed

They’ve rolled out a lot of new products for example:
OneAcademy
OneLifeNetwork
OnePay
OneExchange
OneForex
CoinCloud
OneWorld Foundation
CoinVegas

So… This is a bit more advanced from where it started back in 2014. They then promised to make you very rich, if you give them some money first of course. These new products and the marketing behind them does sort of look like something legit. But is it?

Let’s see how this Onecoin thing actually works:

IA’s earn 10% commission on anyone they sign up, but with the caveat that only 6% goes into their cash account (assumption is you can then withdraw this amount) while 4% goes into a mandatory account. The cash account is semi-liquid but expensive to withdraw from - the fees are around 15€; and the mandatory account, as the name implies, only allows you to either buy more tokens (or coins) or to use towards upgrading your packages towards the Infinity Package.

So essentially you are not earning on traditional trading (price goes up…) but you get affiliate commission on new victims you lure in. If people are offered cash for new registrations, it incentivises them to invite more people. Seems like easy cash.
Also the t&c actually states that you are not even buying a cryptocurrency but instead “educational materials”. Seems pretty much the essence of a ponzi to me.

OneCoin Success Stories

I have personally had a lot of people asking me whether they should invest in OneCoin and my suggestion is always no. People that have actually gone ahead and invested in this nothing-to-do-with-crypto phenomenon have also told me about their experience.
Some said they had made an awesome profit, but had to wait like another year to be able to withdraw. Hang on… That doesn’t sound too good. When I later on linked up with them to ask how it went they briefly said that they invested only a small amount and weren’t too sad about the loss.

Another thing that rang alarm bells. When I was first contacted about OneCoin by a fellow trader I heard some interesting stories. At the time I was the member of the board of the Estonian Cryptocurrency Association. He was not aware of that. He stated that one of the ECA board members Hasso (dear friend of mine, true, also on the board, actually called Asse) had invested 20k into this. And I am retarded not to join now there on the spot, immediately! I didn’t invest. Neither did Asse.

The Interview

As we kept getting questions about OneCoin we decided to get the answers straight from the horse’s mouth. We asked Ruja Ignatova (the super awesome businesswoman behind Onecoin) some questions. Turns out this was the first and last interview with her:

So as I understand, Onecoin is mainly centralised cryptocurrency? Centralised mining, centralised blockchain and centralised public exchange? Which components of the Onecoin system are decentralised?

OneCoin will have two phases in development. One is “centralized” while we mine. As we sell the mining rights we have to make sure that everyone who pays let us say 100 EUR also receives the same amount of coins as someone who pays 100 EUR too. So in the beginning we will mine for the network. Once we reach a good development and number of coins, we will open the exchange for other people. The end goal is to make the whole coin public so people can trade on all exchanges, but it has to be fair to the network. We are discussing now with some of the big names if they can audit the blockchain – so that the members and people outside have trust in it

This is more philosophical question maybe but you are saying that one of the main reasons why Bitcoin is bad, is its decentralised form, it's on many exchanges and because of that volatility and lack of liquidity? In my opinion, volatility is very normal in small mass of usage like Bitcoin today is, compared with fiat currencies. But it has already improved as the usage and trading numbers getting bigger. You think, that you solve liquidity and volatility with a centralised exchange? So basically you’ll make another central bank which has theoretical possibilities to control or even change the price, limit transaction or other kind of activities? If so, then how are those possibilities avoided?

Now one of the big issues in my opinion is that Bitcoin’s target group is an elite. This are either people who are very sophisticated (IT knowledge) or people who have enough money to diversify in other assets. It is not a coin for “small” people. So in my opinion targeting this target group and making the coin useable can create liquidity to the market. In the beginning we need the central exchange, as we cannot reach the numbers of bitcoin within a short time if we do not do any central planning, marketing and education of people

How you are doing KYC?

This is the benefit of the centralized approach we choose in the beginning. KYC is done on our website. Whoever takes out more than 2.500 EUR of the system needs to upload the needed documents

Who holds the private keys of the Onecoin? Onecoin company, or user itself?

Currently the company

What consensus methods are used to process the transactions? Is it POW, POS, POB or something else or is it any? If not, is a mining somehow related with consensus algorithm at all?

POW

About mining difficulty. In the Onecoin presentation it has been said that mining difficulty depends on the amount of the onecoins already mined. So it doesn’t depend on the amount of mining computation resource? How is variable computation resource and algorithm difficulty regulated then? I mean, how is the calculation time of the mining problem regulated?

I am not sure I understand the question here correctly. We definitely try to explain the topics as simple as we can for the network as most people do not understand the technical background – can we specify the question

How long will be transaction time of the Onecoin transactions? Confirmation time?

10 min

How open sourced is the whole project? I haven’t see any github, codes or any other technical materials. One of the main Bitcoin success reasons was its open source form and the big community behind that. If you are closed then how do you plan to get together the critical coin usage mass?

see answer on point 1

Why don’t you accept Bitcoins or any other cryptocurrencies as a payment method? They are not supported by KYC is the wrong answer :)

We are thinking about this actually – but until now there has been no demand for this from the members

Regarding the MLM system, as I understand, the main product what you are actually selling is the educational materials?

yes

How About Nope!

So this is why I have no faith in Onecoin and I do not suggest anyone investing in it. We posted our opinion on the Estonian Cryptocurrency Association website and received an angry letter from them shortly after publishing it. So if this really is a legit money making machine that will solve all of the problems of society then why do they need to make things up, I wonder...

If you are interested in cryptocurrencies - read about the real thing!
Why don't you get yourself the real thing instead - Coinbasewill give you a tenner when buying some coins here! If into trading my favourite platform for Bitcoin is SimpleFX.

Liina Laas - A crypto enthusiast, currency trader, entrepreneur, mum of two and one of the founders of the Estonian Cryptocurrency Association.