Great BBC programme The Missing Cryptoqueen

I hadn't heard of Onecoin before I heard this podcast.

It's a bit long winded but it's very interesting.

They claimed to have a cryptocurrency - but they didn't even have a blockchain.
They took in €4 billion
People can't cash out for real money.
The main person behind it - Dr Ruja disappeared suddenly two years ago.
Most of the top people have been arrested

But still the faithful believe in it.
They consider the criticism to be an establishment conspiracy

One woman who realised that it was a scam has said that there is no point in explaining that to her friends. They still believe in it.

one of the many odd things is that the founder is so striking looking, it's strange that she has not been spotted since she disappeared.

a friend of mine invested in this, I think he lost a couple of thousand. He didn't tell me directly I just heard about it from another friend he tried to recruit, he obviously knew I would not be interested in it. It was at the height of the bitcoin mania during the last part of 2017. Uniquely it seemed to be based on word of mouth and friends recruiting other friends, exactly like the pyramid scheme that spread like wildfire in Ireland around year 2000, it also recruited a lot of the same individuals that lost money when that pyramid scheme collapsed. Its based on the same old trick making people think there are in on something that's not open to the general public and that they need to get in quick before it becomes mainstream

OneCoin is a multi level marketing scam. In terms of the people behind it, one was associated with another MLM scam - UNAICO / Side Talk. That one wasn't associated with crypto. It was being pimped on the basis of a potential Initial Public Offering (IPO) - which was complete vapour ware of course. The 'project' itself does not consist of a blockchain.

These guys have nothing to do with blockchain and crypto. However, they are using it as a cover for their scam. When they can no longer use that as cover, they'll move on to use something else for cover. OneCoin has been called out as a scam from the very beginning. Despite that, there are still people turning up at 'events' related to it. People have to do their due diligence when choosing to place their hard earned funds in anything.

We should not be surprised, scammers exist in every aspect of life.

What was most revealing about the programme was how easy it was to fool people.

Onecoin is worth nothing. Nothing at all.
But the believers had faith.
It was going to disrupt the world order.
It was an alternative to banking.
No matter how much people explained to people that it was worthless, nothing could shake their faith.
In fact, it was pointless even arguing with the faithful. They were blind to any reason or logic.
Anyone who pointed out that it was worthless was told that they just didn't understand the technology behind it.
The value of OneCoin was apparently due to the fact that the supply was limited so it had to increase in value.
They acknowledged that there were problems mining it, but these would be overcome by technology in time.

What is surprising is that it still exists and apparently, people are still buying it.
I don't know how it has lasted this long.

Brendan

Brendan Burgess said:

Onecoin is worth nothing. Nothing at all. But the believers had faith.
It was going to disrupt the world order. It was an alternative to banking.
No matter how much people explained to people that it was worthless, nothing could shake their faith.
In fact, it was pointless even arguing with the faithful. They were blind to any reason or logic.
Anyone who pointed out that it was worthless was told that they just didn't understand the technology behind it.
The value of OneCoin was apparently due to the fact that the supply was limited so it had to increase in value.
They acknowledged that there were problems mining it, but these would be overcome by technology in time.

Click to expand...

You're quite right to point out a Multi Level Marketing (MLM) scam. However, I suspect given your views and previous posts, you're trying to brand crypto and blockchain across the board with this (when this thing doesn't even involve a blockchain network...ergo ...it's not a crypto). That's not correct. As I mentioned above, some of the people behind this can be directly linked to previous MLM scams that didn't use crypto as cover. One such scam was based upon an alleged Initial Public Offering (IPO) - and the conventional investment world. That doesn't mean that we all should never go near conventional investments. It means that we all have a duty of care to do our own research and do our own due diligence.

The same is true with crypto. To suggest otherwise is to slight genuine people that are working diligently on this technology.

Hi Tecate

You must have misread my post. This is what my post was about:

Brendan Burgess said:

What was most revealing about the programme was how easy it was to fool people.

Click to expand...

And as I pointed out in my first post:

Brendan Burgess said:

They claimed to have a cryptocurrency - but they didn't even have a blockchain.

Click to expand...

Brendan Burgess said:

Hi Tecate
You must have misread my post. This is what my post was about:
And as I pointed out in my first post:

Click to expand...

Hi Brendan. I don't believe that I've misread or misinterpreted your post at all.

In any event, the point is - scams don't discriminate in terms of business sector. They're likely to be run all the more if there is ignorance or a lack of understanding of a new technology or business sector. People have to do their own due diligence on blockchain and crypto projects as there are genuine projects and there are scams claiming to be genuine projects.