So there it is ladies and gentlemen, BitConnect has shut down and is giving investors a run for their money.
The inevitable happened, and unfortunately, it happened much sooner than I expected.
On their website BitConnect announced the following:
“We are closing the lending operation immediately with the release of all outstanding loans…With release of your entire active loan in the lending wallet we are transferring all your lending wallet balance to your BitConnect wallet balance at 363.62USD…This rate has been calculated based on the last 15 days averages of the closing price registered on coinmarketcap.com.”
That may sound like them being nice by giving you a good return, however, when trying to access their exchange to actually convert your BCC to BTC, it simply shows that their exchange is currently not working.. how convenient. So no luck getting the majority of your funds back.
The only thing that worked for me was sending my BCC to HitBTC and trading it for a much lower rate, to at least take back a fraction of the money I put in. I traded it for something a little bit more reliable to perhaps somewhere in the future still see some of that money return to me.
I feel lucky that I was careful enough to not put in any funds I couldn't afford to lose in case something like this would happen. So I'm not very worried about my losses.
However, the responses I saw from people on several forums really made me sad and feel for them.
I read about some people having invested all of their savings in the platform and sometimes even going as far as taking out loans to buy themselves into BitConnect.
It went so far as to have people posting links and contact information to suicide prevention websites... what a terrible nightmare.
Death threats to BitConnect Envangelists such as Trevon James and people hoping to track down BitConnect's founders and organizing coordinated legal action followed.
As much as I feel bad for them though, I have to also say that investing all your money is never a good strategy in cryptocurrency.
If you can't afford to lose any money, just leave it be, regardless of the platform or token, there is always a significant risk of losing everything. Don't be an idiot.
I'm fairly certain we'll be seeing a lot more companies scamming people, that includes ICOs.
It does leave me wondering how much money the BCC got away with, and what that will do to the market.
Hopefully this will be a lesson for all in the future.