Apparently, 263,673 Bitcoins representing about 1.6% of the world's circulating supply of Bitcoin may be locked up in a Ponzi scheme that's almost nearly certain to disappear shortly. With Bernie Madoff in prison, this could possibly be the world's largest active Ponzi scheme.

At the moment the site is either undergoing a heavy DDoS attack, or we are at the beginning stages of a quick exit scam when the site goes offline forever.

263,673 Bitcoins from 124.5K investors (as of my last contact with the site before it went offline) have already been gained by Bitlake with the lofty promise of 10-15% returns per day for life. As these are unsustainable returns, this combined with the dearth of information about the investment itself, and the team behind Bitlake, leads one to believe that this is almost certainly a Ponzi scheme.

Although it screams Ponzi scheme in bright neon letters, one can still see the allure of taking a risk on this "investment." It's more of a gamble than an investment because the depositor is simply hoping that they get their principal returned, and earn a lot of profit while the BTC faucet taps are open.

A large percentage of the investors may be well aware of the end game but still invested because the time to reach a profit is so short. If one deposited a smaller amount, it would take only 10 days to get a return on your investment. The largest deposits earn 15% a day, meaning it would take only a week of Bitlake being in operation for one to turn a profit! So these guys are almost certain to disappear one day soon, when this whole house of cards topples as every true Ponzi ends up when the payouts become unsustainable when the flood of investors stop.

Full disclosure: I deposited a very minimal amount as part of researching this story. It's approximately 60% returned on the "investment" but I won't list my referral code though, as I DO NOT recommend sending your BTC here. This website is almost certain to disappear - in fact it's unreachable at the moment - either when they get enough to retire on, or when the payouts become too large for the amount of new money coming in.

Note: I was unable to take a screenshot of the latest data but I recorded notes on my iPad as that was able to reach it briefly while my other devices were unable to connect.

Caveat Emptor!