I talk a lot about cryptocurrency with friends and co-workers, recently i came to talk with the head of HR where i work during a coffee break.
She wanted to know my thoughts about OneCoin since her and her husband had invested some money into it. I've read a lot for the past year. I've seen a lot of ICO's, crapcoins and blatant scams riding on the success wave of other currencies.
I told her straight up that it was a ponzi scheme and that if she could, she had to get out of it before their money was lost.
She didn't quite believe me before i laid down the evidence to support it, and sent her several links to back that information up.
This was a quick checklist i gave her for future investments
- It needs to be open source (If not we have no idea what we are installing, could for all we know be malicious software looking for our private keys to other wallets.)
- Who are the developers? (You need to know who the creators of the product are)
- The needs to be a block explorer for the coin. (If you can't check out the transactions how can you know they are correct? If there is no explorer could it be that no blockchain exists?)
- Can you trade it? (If you can't trade it, it's not worth anything)
Open source and knowing who the developers are and where they are located is a must for me at least, i know some popular and trusted coins don't fill all these criteria but if some are filled and they got a user base it's better than nothing.
Onecoin doesn't fill any of these, what does that tell me?
Don't invest, don't trust them and call them out.
Several agencies in different countries are now examining their fraud attempt, this alone should be a wake-up-call.
If you use Facebook, check out the OneCoin groups there. You can see the members in the group and if you got some of your friends in there, warn them.
Point them in the direction of Steem instead and explain to them how it works and why it works.
A quick morning rant from me, what do you think about Onecoin?
"Can you trade it? (If you can't trade it, it's not worth anything)"
I can not trade my Steem Power, does that make it worthless?
Not every coin is birthed onto an exchange...
"Who are the developers? (You need to know who the creators of the product are)"
Who made bitcoin? I mean besides the Satoshi name... Who is it? We don't know the creator but it's the number juan coin...
Edit: But that Onecoin stuff looks like garbage junkcoin...
Sure you can trade your steempower.
Steempower is just steem...powered up.
Power it down and you can trade it, there is a clear difference.
I also clealy stated " i know some popular and trusted coins don't fill all these criteria but if some are filled and they got a user base it's better than nothing."
It is garbage, garbage that drags the cryptocurrency community in the dirt if adopted.
Your assessment of Onecoin appears to be spot on, I would just hate to see these rules applied to all other projects. If they were all applied not a single coin would get off the ground without being sponsored with big money.
Bitcoin would not have fit your criteria besides open sourced at creation...
I despise tossing around the word scam... A scam implies dishonesty, when most of the time people get "scammed" is because they didn't read. I feel quite confident everyone who signs up for onecoin is informed of the nature of onecoin... If you send money before you read then you don't really need money all that bad do you?
As mentioned not all criteria need to be filled.
But a cryptocurrency need to have a blockchain, if not it's just a centralized object/code that can be copied and pasted several times.
That's not a cryptocurrency which OneCoin claim it is, so they are lying to investors openly.
So people who sign up aren't informed, because they are being fed lies and that's a scam.
You can read all you want on their page but when they are lying they are the ones who needs to be blamed.
Your evidence? Do you work for onecoin and know this is true or are you making an assumption?
The people behind onecoin have tricked people before with ponzi schemes.
The evidence is all over, they cant even show to a blockexplorer, why?
Oh, and here:https://cointelegraph.com/news/one-coin-much-scam-onecoin-exposed-as-global-mlm-ponzi-scheme
https://news.bitcoin.com/beware-definitive-onecoin-ponzi/
That makes it a scheme not a scam @harabd.....
Your post gave me the ambition to write my own rant on the difference between the two...
Agree. If there is a practical way to use the coin and you use it yourself in some kind if useful technology I think it is an okay reason to trust it. I have some florin-coins because they are used in the Alexandria-project. The developers of the Alexandria project did not invent the florin they found an already existing coin that had the properties they needed.