As many of you probably know by now many lending programs such as USI TECH and Bitconnect have closed their operations. Both these companies received cease and desists orders from the Texas State Securities Board. In the case of USI TECH the company will no longer do business with United States or Canada markets. All assets of investors from this two countries are frozen and under investigation. As far as I know, they are analyzing data on all promoters from US and Canada who allegedly committed "unlawful" practices in their advertising efforts and they are also looking for evidence of fraud such as proof of double accounts opened in order to cash out comission bonuses.
When it comes to Bitconnect they decided to release all active loans at a rate of $363 for each Bitconnect Coin. This caused a massive sell-off which resulted in a dip in price of more than 90% of the value of the coin. At some point it went as low as $5 per coin. All the top promoters in the company have decided to HODL their BCC coins. Trevon James in particular decided to buy even more BCC coins at a price of $20 each (or less). Ankur Agarwal who is another one of the biggest promoters recorded this video talking about the situation. Top leaders realize the Bitconnect community and the development team has the potential to boost the BCC coin price into 4 figures in six months to a year.
NOTE: There are other lending programs out there which are copycats of Bitconnect currently still running. Some of them include PagareX, Davor, THORNCOIN and NeoConnect. According to Ankur the big money is in the crypto space. I would agree with him but is just too risky to continue putting money into this lending programs which easily get shut down by Cease and Desists orders. I invested a lot of the money I had and I don’t know if I will ever see again. In short I have learned to stay away from lending programs or so called “Bitcoin multipliers”. Traffic Monsoon is another of these lending programs that was shut down by the Security Exchange Commission after about two years in operation.
My personal opinion is neither USI TECH nor BITCONNECT are Ponzi schemes. If we can classify the way these companies operate as Ponzi Schemes then by definition the way the FEDERAL RESERVE operates is also a Ponzi scheme and so are the big financial institutions. How so? Well according to many people Bitconnect could sustain to pay out to their investors not because they had a trading bot which exchanged Bitcoin for a profit but because they had a massive supply of Bitconnect tokens they could use to sustain the business model. Honestly, this is not much different than being able to print money or having the ability to legally add a few extra zeros on the credit balance of a bank account owned by a big financial institution. Only about 3% of all money in existence is in cash. Over 97% of all money exists as numbers stored in computer systems. If you follow 
When it comes to USI TECH which has also been labeled as a Ponzi one of their main income sources comes from processing transactions in the ethereum network using mining equipment. As you probably know through mining, transactions are verified and processed and then a fee is collected. USI TECH can generate as much as 40 million dollars per week using the Genesis pool equipment they loaned in a contract and branded as their own. Is this much different than the fee VISA or MASTERCARD charge to every vendor and consumer for processing transactions using credit cards? I don't think so. The real difference here has to do with the parties that benefit from these transactions or the creation of money. There is a reason why 1% of the richest people in the world own more than half of all the world's wealth.
Given the current situation, I'm calling it quits with lending programs. My game plan will be to get really good at creating content here on Steemit and I will put effort towards building up my reputation and steem power. Right now I'm learning as much as I can about this platform and collecting advice about how to become a successful content creator/curator in the steemit community. In a future blog post I will collect my thoughts about what I learn and create a resource page to help newcomers achieve maximum success with this platform faster.
Outside of steemit I will also be working on promoting a few other programs. One of them is Yoonla, which is currently launching phase two. Yoonla is Cost Per Action (CPA) type program and rewards 2-4$ every time you refer someone to join. Everyone can join for free. In order to receive compensation name and email is required. If you try this program out I suggest you to refrain from cheating by creating multiple accounts or purchasing a list of email addresses. The team will investigate your account and if they find proof of wrongdoing they won't pay out any commissions and block you. You don't want to be in this situation. Share the program with your friends on facebook and you will be able to generate some money when they join.
I'm also looking to earn as much money as I can from credit card sign up bonuses or credit card rewards. You can also use the information here to take maximum advantage of credit card programs. One credit card I recommend you to try is Discover it. This card will double all cash back you earned at the end of the first year. It also comes with 0 percent APR for 14 months and more cash rewards are applied in rotating categories. The one category I use it most for is Amazon because technically I earn 10% cash back. This is more than most other cards including the Amazon Prime Store Card which comes with automatic 5% cash back on all Amazon purchases under $179. I believe the other card that can do this (earn you 10% from Amazon) is the Chase Sapphire Preferred Credit Card but that one has a $97 annual fee which Discover it card doesn't have. Discover it card has no annual fee. If you apply through my link and you are approved we both get $50. You can also get early access to this metal card that has a never seen before cash back structure.
We will see how things turn out. I'm glad to see the cryptocurrency market is starting to recuperate once again. Many have been the events that caused this recent crash including:
China banning miners
South Korea threatening to outlaw cryptocurrency trading (a country which accounts for 15% of all crypto trading)
Regulations against lending platforms Bitconnect and USI TECH
Market manipulation of Bitcoin Shares by Financial Institutions
All of the above has caused many people who entered this space to panic sell their cryptocurrency assets at a loss resulting in the big crash we saw. My advice to you. Just keep moving forward and continue to HODL your cryptocurrency hard.
Never stop until you reach your goals. Until next time.
TERMS:
HODL: HOLD ON FOR DEAR LIFE
Image source: giphy.com & memegenerator.net