The FBI is seeking potential victims who invested in the cryptocurrency Bitconnect coin (BCC), which was first released through an initial coin offering orchestrated by Bitconnect in November 2016.
For a majority of BCC’s existence, the only place to purchase, trade, or sell the cryptocurrency was the through the proprietary exchange hosted by Bitconnect.
(CNN Money explained the concept of Bitcoin and whether it’s the currency of the future. Courtesy of CNN Money and YouTube. Posted on Apr 1, 2014.)
By mid-December 2017, BCC boasted a market cap of over $2.5 billion.
Bitconnect guaranteed investors up to a 10 percent total return per month on their investment, following a tiered-investment system based on the sum of an investor’s initial deposit.
Bitconnect Crash
The entire market for BCC crashed in late January 2018, after two U.S. state-level securities regulators issued public letters warning investors of the Ponzi-type nature of Bitconnect.
This led to Bitconnect completely shutting down its exchange for BCC, eliminating the market for the cryptocurrency and stranding investors with near-worthless cryptocurrency.
(Learn More, courtesy of Techquickie and YouTube. Posted on Feb 5, 2019.)