If I were alone in a dark alley and a strange hooded figure approached me, I’d rather it be a big-time member of some drug cartel come to kidnap and hold me for ransom than a OneCoin affiliate.
Okay, maybe they’re not quite that bad, but the company definitely has trust issues.
Was I ever involved?
This video explains everything:
Make sense? Either way, here’s the full review on OneCoin.
Overview
OneCoin claims to be “The First Transparent, Global Cryptocurrency for Everyone.” Even the smallest amount of research shows that they’re anything but transparent, though.
Founded by a Bulgarian woman named Ruja Ignatova, OneCoin is registered in Bulgaria and Gibraltar. They currently don’t have legal permission to operate in a number of countries, including the United States.
Ignatova’s website claims that she graduated from Oxford University, but there is no evidence to support the claim that she ever went to Oxford, and there are a lot of questions surrounding her educational and professional background. [1]
Sebastian Greenwood is also involved in the company, a man who has worked for a slew of shady MLMs that were brought down for being Ponzi scams. Before OneCoin, he worked for Unaico, a company that came under fire from Pakistan’s Securities and Exchanges Commisison.
The company claims that by the beginning of 2016, they had become the second largest cryptocurrency in the world, supplying 120 billion coins worldwide.
But more is not better when it comes to currency. Ever heard of that thing called inflation? The more of a currency you pump into a financial system (which is pretty easy to do when you’re using a virtual currency that you literally made up), the less it is worth. There are photos of people in places like Zimbabwe and Poland during periods of hyperinflation carrying around entire wheelbarrows full of cash just to buy groceries because their currency was worth next to nothing.
Well, OneCoin’s currency is actually worth nothing, but at least you don’t have to carry around wheelbarrows full of it…because it’s not real.
At a recent event put on by OneCoin in Dubai, bitcoin expert James Dollahan and a handful of his associates attended to gather more information on the cryptocurrency. After the event, Dollahan issued an advisory regarding OneCoin, and stated:
“They met with the owners and managers of Onecoin and yes, their behavior and things said were just as I had warned them about. Nothing that could be verified except on their own websites […]. Regarding technical questions, they were not detailed in their answers and much did not make sense to them based on what true crypto currencies are.”
The Central Bank of Uganda just published a warning to its citizens regarding OneCoin, who recently expanded to one of Uganda’s major cities. They’re not the first Central Bank in Africa to have to issue advisories to its citizens about OneCoin, either. [2]
In December 2016, Italy’s government put a halt to OneCoin, suspending them altogether from operating in the country due to their pyramid scam activities. [3]
Just about the only thing that OneScam is #1 at is scamming.
Angelina Lazar, a rogue economist and noted cryptocurrency expert ranked the top 3 cryptocurrency scams, and guess who came out on top?
OneCoin. [4]
How much does OneCoin cost?
The cheapest option for joining OneCoin is to purchase their £100 starter pack. However, there are tons of upsells and larger packages that claim to make you more money ranging all the way up to £28,000.
Products
While OneCoin is all about their cryptocurrency, that’s not actually their product.
What OneCoin sells is “educational packages” ranging from around $100-$120,000. The idea is that these packages are investments, because they come with “tokens” that can be used to mine for Onecoins (the company’s cryptocurrency). This allows them to claim that they don’t actually sell cryptocurrency, even though it’s all they talk about in their advertising and recruitment meetings.
According to the company, Onecoins are mined by servers at two sites in Bulgaria and one in Hong Kong. They can only be exchanged through the company’s exchange site, Onecoin Exchange, and you have to purchase more than just a starter package to access the exchange. There are daily limits to how much you can exchange depending on which package you purchased, meaning this cryptocurrency isn’t fully liquid either.
They make some pretty wild claims about these packages they sell. They say that it’s not only impossible to lose money with the packages, but with the packages that involve splits (which double your token stash), you double the value of your investment…at worst.
Speakers at previous events have stated that investing in a £3,900 package will yield you £8,500 even if the value of the Onecoins doesn’t increase at all. If it does, you could net as much as £32,000. Of course, the possibility of the currency losing value isn’t even mentioned. [5]
Sounds unlikely because it is. The OneCoin website’s terms and conditions state:
“The company does not warrant that product descriptions or other content is accurate, complete, reliable, current, or error-free.”
It doesn’t get much more obvious than that.
Opportunity
It wouldn’t be an MLM if they didn’t want you to recruit, recruit, recruit.
Or if they didn’t use an unnecessarily confusing, vague compensation plan to explain how you can get rich doing so.
You also don’t get paid in your local currency, or even in their cryptocurrency. Instead, you get paid in tokens.
You can make money through a number of methods, but only 60% of the payments go to your “cash account” while another 40% go to your “mandatory account”. You cash account is ready to be spent (you can purchase more packages or more Onecoins with your tokens), and your mandatory account is where a portion of your earnings stays to continue mining for more Onecoins.
Whether or not any of this really ever turns into actual, widely accepted currency is unclear.
Direct Sales: 10% commission on your personal sales
Network Bonus: 10% commission off BV of your weaker leg
Matching Bonus: Matching bonuses depend on your package and can go up to 25% and 4 generations
Start Up Bonus: During your first 30 days you get an extra 10% on personal commission, for a total fo 20%
One Life Club: Win bonus points that you can exchange for vacations, luxury goods, and other items.
Splits: This is where it gets interesting. Whenever they hit a certain number of total members, they can double the amount of tokens in your account (more expensive packages include more splits). It’s explained that as more members join, demand for the currency raises and its value goes up, but the company doesn’t want a “price explosion”, so they just randomly double some members’s currency.
It’s kind of like when the government just randomly throws TONS of money at your because your country is so popular! Wait, that doesn’t happen?
That’s because this is not economics, at all. There’s nothing real about this. They are just making crap up at this point.
Gold: In case tokens, points, and OneCoins weren’t enough to keep track of, you can also earn “Aurum Gold Coins”, a new cryptocurrency that is supposedly backed by 1 mg of gold/coin that is stored in a vault in Dubai. Gold is given out in tiered amounts each time you buy a package.
Recap
I may rail on home parties and miracle supplements from time to time, but I rarely say this:
This MLM is a full-on, downright scam. They don’t operate in the U.S. because the SEC would kick them out in a heartbeat. Even countries in Africa that are known for sending out scams on the internet are issuing warnings about these guys.
You might be better off investing in Chuck E. Cheese tokens.
But if it’s financial freedom you seek and you like automated ways to build passive income, there are better ways.
(and you can trash those old MLM habits, too)
via http://mlmcompanies.org/onecoin/
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