A bit less than three months ago, I started to investigate all things crypto with nearly every free moment I had. Since then I've learned a lot through reading as well as the ever painful trial and error. One of the many things that I stumbled upon along the way is still holding my attention and that is the Bitconnect Platform.
Everything I could find about it at first made it completely nonconclusive for me about whether it was legitimate or the ever looming ponzi scheme. You can find people on both sides of that argument on steemit, reddit, youtube, pretty much anywhere you look. A number of users that I have watched or follow are EastCoastCrytpo, Jeti Knight, Trevon James, Jason, and Craig Grant. (all youtubers and most if not all are also steemers) as well as a number of others. Most of these guys are reaping the benefits of the referral marketing that is used by Bitconnect to great effect, so consider that when consuming their content about this topic.
On the other side of this argument I've watched a number of vids by Kubera, Ken Bosak, Boxmining, and Sean Walters. These guys are not bashful about their opinion on bitconnect. A couple of these guys are so adamant about getting their point across, they have multiple vids on the subject (or I suppose they could just be riding the hype train...?). Whatever the motive, they all make some very good points on why they have the opinions they do.
There is one youtuber that I have been following that gives no indication of his opinion on the platform (at least not yet), but is simply reporting on his status of a 20k loan started a bit over three months ago. His youtube moniker is Lanzer.
So after doing research in various places and watching vids from all of these youtubers plus many more, about a month ago, my wife and I decided to throw a 100 bucks at bitconnect and see what happened. So far, things are just fine from my personal perspective, but nothing in that regard to shift my opinion in either direction. However, there has been quite a bit of news and user experience I have read or viewed since that has shifted my opinion in a positive direction.
One of the big things that I felt was going to be the first test for bitconnect was whether or not people were going to get their capital returned as promised once their loan matured. Videos started popping up on this topic a few weeks ago (there are probably earlier ones, but I only just noticed two weeks ago). The result to this test so far seems to be a positive one. As time goes on we'll be able to see if this stays consistent or if we start to see signs of impending collapse.
Another thing that I felt was a good test was going to be information release from the recent event held a couple weeks ago in Bangkok. Crypto Clover had a few videos about his experiences, I think I saw a couple vids on Michael Cryptos channel, and there were a few others that I can't recall the name off the top of my head. Information is starting to come out about how this company does business, albeit slowly (they've been online for over a year!), but it is surfacing, and that is a good thing.
A bit of information I found interesting yesterday was about the new crypto index that was just recently approved by the SEC. One of the coins included in that index is Bitconnect. Here is the steemit post that caught my attention: https://steemit.com/cryptocurrency/@huiosrealtors/sec-approve-bitconnect-in-crypto-index-on-u-s-stock-market
Now I don't know much about how index funds function, and I could be mistaken on this, but I have a feeling that a company who potentially will be managing millions or possibly billions in currency is not going to include a company/crypto that can not pass their internal testing with positive results. Here is another example of time will tell, but this is a positive bump for Bitconnect in my opinion.
I started keeping a spreadsheet when I began my first loan and decided I should share my 30 day results along with my comments.
As you can see in the pic, I added an extra $100 shortly after the clamour about 8/1 died down and business started getting back to normal. I have also done two $10 reinvestments along the way. If you are so inclined, you can compare those interest percentages to the bitconnect website. Each day I've checked the payout amount to make sure the math is accurate (outside of some rounding issues in the first week, which has since been fixed), and so far it has been. I currently have about $50 sitting in my bitconnect wallet since I decided to try and capitalize on the growth over the last couple weeks (it went from $~60 up to where it sits now at $117).
The reason I have not reinvested that yet is two fold. First is what I just mentioned with the bitconnect coin growth being much greater than the daily average (5 – 6% vs ~1%). And second, is because I have recently invested in some trading software as yet another experiment, and plan to move the bitconnect payouts over to the exchange I'm testing the software on. Which brings me to my next point.
One of the main concerns that many people bring up is the idea that the yield on bitconnect loans is just too high. It's unsustainable. I've heard many people say “1% per day is just ridiculous! It's a scam because it's too high yield!” As you can see in my spreadsheet, the daily average for my first 30 days is 1.08%. This makes for a cumulative 32.29% return on my investments in my first month. That's very impressive to me, especially in a world where the money masters (you know them as the FED, Federal Reserve, Central Banks, and a number of other names) tell all of us that right now 3% return on a CD is a good deal. (I'm well aware that there are many investment options with banks and investment firms, I simply want to point out that when we invest money to someone, bank or otherwise, they get to use that money for whatever they want as long as we get our promised returns at maturity, and current given rates are abysmally low.)
This was actually the main purpose of finally deciding to go ahead on the trading software. I wanted to see for myself if what bitconnect claims is the driving force of their success is in fact feasible. For those not in the know about how bitconnect works, they claim to use proprietary “volatility software” to trade market movements of BTC vs USDT as well as other 4EX currencies (their words).
I am not the first person to do this by any means. One of the guys I have been following did this (EastCoastCrypto), and his results helped me make a decision about going forward with this idea. The trading software for me is averaging about 2% a day and I think that is in part due to me being conservative with my strategy settings. I've been reading about a number of users over on bitcointalk forms seeing anywhere from 2% to 10% depending on how much risk they want to take (when you consider how wildly the crypto markets are swinging, that can be significant risk).
Jeti Knight has some very good videos and blog posts breaking down how the bitconnect model can actually be sustainable (yes, he uses math), as well as explains how these ideas floating around of how someone can turn 100k into one trillion dollars in 10 years is ridiculous. Go watch/read his stuff, his explanations are very well done.
At the end of the day, I think this is what it all boils down to. How much risk do you want to take with your money? For me, bitconnect is well within the realm of my risk/reward ratio and I consider myself very conservative when it comes to money. I will continue to add to my investments over time, while also keeping track of other people's experiences as well as news releases to watch for any signs of trouble ahead. Bitconnect is continuing to be true to their word every day. Yep, that could change at any moment, but isn't that true for any business? Just because a business fails doesn't make it a scam or ponzi scheme, it just means their business model did not hold up to market demands. And just because a business succeeds doesn't mean it's legitimate. Paying their bills and fullfilling their obligations in a legal manner is what consititutes legitimacy in my eyes. Yes, there are actual scams out there, and each person is responsible for doing their own due diligence to decide if the company or team they are considering investing in is making a 100% effort to make good on their claims.
Hopefully my thoughts and comments about my limited experience with this platform has been helpful in one form or another to someone out there on this topic.