Ponzi Alert: BitConnect is Back for the Rest of Your Money

The platform promises to reward BC2 bagholders by paying dividends derived from future BC2 sales and purchases, with 10% of the transfer being distributed as dividends. The scam also attempts to leverage a referral scheme to suck more users in, offering BC2 holders the option to generate a masternode link (glorified referral link) to recruit new players, receiving 30% of their profits in doing so. The suspiciously generous referral system of the first BitConnect was one of the main reasons it was so successful, with investors recruiting their friends, family and anybody else to the Ponzi in return for a higher interest rate.

A Passionate Community of Haters

As with BitConnect 1.0, those operating the platform are anonymous, which is to be expected considering it turned out to be a complete Ponzi scam. Despite this, the project claims to be developed by an “established and experienced team supported by a passionate community.” However, looking at the Bitcointalk announcement, it seems the project has exactly the opposite, gathering an overwhelmingly negative reception as users rightly reminded unaware investors about the gigantic exit scam BitConnect pulled in 2018. In addition, the smart contract mentions “the new dev team consists of seasoned, professional developers and has been audited by veteran solidity experts. […] Additionally, two independent testnet iterations have been used by hundreds of people; not a single point of failure was found.” However, it neglects to provide a source to back up these claims, likely because they are outright fabrications.

People are Already Being Robbed

As it stands, the new BitConnect 2.0 smart contract has already received more than $40,000 in investments, and the project claims to have distributed over 140 ETH to token holders. The BC2 buy price is currently set at 0.00256 ETH, while the sell price is 0.002098 ETH, these numbers will fluctuate based on the number of buy and sell orders. Although the smart contract source code is freely visible online, it hasn’t yet undergone a third-party security audit, and will almost certainly contain some sort of backdoor to allow the creator to drain the contract balance. While the creators of the new BitConnect vaguely indicate they are in fact those behind BitConnect 1.0, this remains unlikely considering Divyesh Darji, the alleged owner of the original BitConnect was arrested in August 2018. It remains to be seen whether Carlos Matos will be available to reprise his role as hype guy for the new Ponzi scheme, after all, it’s not BitConnect without him. Do you think anybody will be duped by the new BitConnect copycat? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!