David Van de Walle

Nov 13 2017

Coinreum, Hexabot, and Bitconnect – Updates on Three Passive Income Platforms

Well, after an active weekend of craziness around Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash, we thought we’d instead focus on Passive Income Platforms that we’ve talked about on the site quite a bit. Today, a brief post about three of them – two new, one not-so-new – and the future of these PIPs.

It’s also time for our regular warning: while we’re happy to experiment on these sites, don’t “invest” more than you can afford to lose. If you send Bitcoin or any other coin to a site with the promise of real huge returns, caution should rule the day. To us, $50 or so worth of Bitcoin or Ethereum or another coin is a fine starting point – and we consider that money gone the second it is sent. (This also keeps us from sending large amounts: it’s going into a black hole.)

With that aside, here’s our take on three such platforms: Coinreum, Hexabot, and Bitconnect.

Coinreum – AVOID. DON’T INVEST.

We’ve pulled the ads for Coinreum, and won’t put them back up. Why?

Well, while it appears to be legit – if you judge its semi-ubiquitous ad campaigns as signs of legitimacy – it has all the signs of the other scams we’ve witnessed:

Pretty audacious returns in a short time (total cumulative returns of 150% on up for just a few weeks of “investment”)
A lot of emails telling you things like “you have a new accrual!”
But no payouts for us yet. None.

In addition, their Twitter handle disappeared over the weekend. That, to us, is the beginning of the end.

As with all of these, it’s an experiment – we’re out a little bit of ETH, but we’re also playing with house money, so we’re happy to take one for the team.

Coinreum: AVOID. DON’T INVEST.

Hexabot – We’re Cautiously Optimistic

We sent a little bit over to the Hexabot site, which our buddy Travis first told us about in this interview. Here’s our AFFILIATE LINK: Hexabot.

We sent so little that we have yet to reach the threshold where we have enough to withdraw; that will tell you how close we are to actually calling ourselves “whales.” Ha!

We’ll keep you posted.

Bitconnect – Is It Legit?

That’s a variation on the number one question we get here: “Is Bitconnect a Ponzi Scheme?”

Folks behind Bitconnect counter with a video, which Travis sent to us and we’re sharing here.

To wit, the video tells us:

The CEO of Bitconnect Ltd does not exist
Bitconnect is now a “Plc” as opposed to a LLC
Any rumors that the company is going out of business are not true, per the video’s creator, since they’re just changing the way the company is structured.

That being said, we’re still recommending it – and you can learn about our experiences here: 99 Days of Bitconnect – but, as with anything else, use some serious judgment with any of these platforms. With Bitconnect…

Unless you’re a big spender, your deposits are locked down for as many as 299 days
In order to achieve the massive compounding some folks talk about, you’ll need to reinvest each $10 in interest earned and do so regularly BUT…
Each of those reinvestments starts another 299 day clock.

In other words, you could build a really huge stack of Bitconnect money, then, if the site disappears next year, you may see absolutely none of it. It’s always a risk.

Again, We’re Experimenting

Passive income is like this: you don’t know what works until you find out what works. Your experience may vary. Past performance does not indicate future results.

One last thing: get some POW Tokens, will ya? They’re free – if you use this link we’ll get some, too, but it’s a unique project and the airdrop is still going on.

Nov 06 2017

The Metacoin Q&A – Travis McGarrah – @MakeBitGrow

We’re trying out a new feature here on the site: today we’re running a Q&A with one of the folks we’ve come to know over the past few weeks, Travis McGarrah, whose Twitter handle is @MakeBitGrow. We met Travis online when we were both lamenting the demise of Bithaul.

In this interview, we’re letting Travis share AFFILIATE LINKS and we’ll be sure to mark those as obviously as we can.

Q: What got you into the Bitcoin and cryptocurrency world?

A: I am new to the crypto world. I started researching it this past August, even though I first heard about Bitcoin first back in 2012 or 2013. At that time, I had no idea what it was and today I am kicking myself for not researching and investing back then.

After researching Bitcoin, I decided I need to jump in. In my mind, Bitcoin and cryptocurrency as a whole is the way of the future. If you know about globalization and understand that the world is getting smaller and smaller every day, you start to understand the need for decentralized currency. In a world where people so freely travel from country to country and commerce is more of a global concept, we need to be able to transfer money from person to person without needing a middle man to exchange fiat currency.

When I came to this realization, I decided to learn as much as I can about the industry.

I work a normal 9-to-5 job, so I don’t have a lot of free time to trade. That is why I got so interested in the various lending platforms out there (most notably Bitconnect and Chain.Group) (NOTE: BITCONNECT AFFILIATE LINK is METACOIN’S, CHAIN.GROUP IS TRAVIS’S.) These programs allow me the chance to passively gain income while still working my 9-to-5.

Q: What has been your most successful trade so far?

A: Being new to crypto and not really trading, my best success has been buying into the ICO for Electroneum (ETN). The just went live on Cryptopia last week. (NOTE: The Cryptopia link is to their referral program; however, we have yet to witness any actual results from their referral program.)

During the ICO, I spent $250 and bought 27,500 ETN. That means I paid roughly $0.009 per ETN. As of 11/6/2017 each ETN is valued at $0.05. On that ICO, I have 5.5x’d my investment. I will speak on Electroneum in a later question.

Q: What has been your biggest trading or investing failure?

A: As I previously stated, I am a fan of the programs that allow me to make money passively. Back in the middle of September there was a website called Aurum Bank that was promising huge growth – we are talking 17% per day – compounding over 15 business days. I invested $1,300 with hopes of making large profits in a short time.

The money never got paid and the website went belly-up. In the matter of 3 weeks, I lost $1300. When you lose $1,300, you tend to get very emotional and start doing ridiculous things. So, without regard to logic, I took another $1,500 and put the money in another website named HourPay.net. They are still operating, but they closed my account and took the money.

This means over the course of 22 days, I lost almost $3,000. That was a gut check and it made me take a step back and evaluate the other programs that I was using at the time. Then I decided to only roll with 3 programs (Bitconnect, Chain.Group, and BitPetite). Since the reevaluation, BitPetite has disappeared, but I was lucky enough to break even on that investment.

Q: That’s a nice segue into Passive Income Platforms – Bitconnect and the like – you and I both met when trying to get to the bottom of the Bithaul scam. Which ones are you currently using?

A: Currently, I am in BitConnect and Chain.Group. From my experience, they are both geared to be around for the long haul. And I recently started using a website called Hexabot, (TRAVIS’S AFFILIATE LINK) which is a new program, but they give you .0001 BTC to start and they have a faucet built into the website. So, you can start using the website at no cost.

Q: Have you done any mining? Any success?

A: I have only spent a little bit on Genesis Mining. I spent about $110 on Ethereum mining and Monero mining. When I get more capital, I would love to put more money into mining. I think there is money to be made there, but you should have a lot of money to invest otherwise you don’t make much. With the $110 I spent, I make about $0.09 per day, which really isn’t anything.

NOTE: Here’s the METACOIN AFFILIATE CODE for GENESIS: waVTYG – use it here: Genesis Mining.

Q: What up-and-coming, under-the-radar, or forgotten coin are you a big fan of?

A: ELECTRONEUM!!! All the way, this is the coin that I am most excited about. I previously spoke on this coin, but I think there is a great chance for it to make waves in the cryptocurrency world.

I consider myself to possess above-average intelligence and able to grasp difficult concepts easily. But most of the world can’t grasp new concepts, like cryptocurrency, quickly. What ETN is doing is making cryptocurrency more understandable and accessible by 2 main ways.

Moving the decimal of cryptocurrency 6 places to the right. Most of the world operates in a way that 2 decimals make way more sense than 8 decimals. This is going to allow more people to understand how cryptocurrency can be used in mainstream ways. To this day, I still struggle thinking in 8 decimals.
Allowing ETN mining through an app or normal CPU capabilities. When people think of mining they think about antminers or these super computers with powerful abilities. Electroneum is working to release an app that will allow anyone with a smartphone to mine their coins passively. This will allow people that may not every be able to access cryptocurrency the ability to mine and earn money.

Electroneum just got listed on Cryptopia, but they haven’t released their ICO tokens to the investors. They only tokens available are from people that have mined them. I firmly feel that Electroneum is gearing up to be a game changer. Keep an eye out for it!

Q: Where do you see the Bitcoin price on New Year’s Day, 2018?

A: Selfishly, I want the price to have a dip after the Segwit2x split. But realistically, I see BTC being in the $8,500 – $9,000 price range. The price for Bitcoin will continually increase as people find more needs for cryptocurrency and blockchain technology.

Here’s what Travis looks like; feel free to follow him on Twitter for more insights. He’s one of the good guys…

One last note – be sure to get your POW Tokens while you still can. Free Airdrop. Use this link: POW TOKENS. We get a bonus if you use that link – but you can get bonuses for referring folks, too. Sometime on November 7, they’re doing a Twitter airdrop. You’ll want to follow them and be at the ready.

Nov 03 2017

On Bitcoin $7000, Bitpetite SCAM, and Crypto Legitimacy

First of all, if you’ve been following this site, you know that we try to be as up front as possible. If we see a scam, we’ll point it out. We encourage you to do your own research (DYOR). We are adamant that you should not invest more than you can afford to lose. And we stress, sometimes in bold and italics, that this is all an experiment.

We took a break from blogging for a couple weeks – some of that was to be in our version of a decompression chamber of sorts. Let’s watch the action, let’s watch our baskets of eggs, and let’s ensure that we get our house in order in the background. In our absence – our last post on Bitconnect was on October 17 – we saw a couple things happen, and we’ll try to break them down for you now.

BTW, this might be as good a time as any for the only banner ad we can run on the site right now – that’s right, we’ll talk about how we, too, were scammed by Bitpetite and we’ve had to go back and scrub their ads. So here’s an AFFILIATE LINK for BITCONNECT. DYOR. Don’t invest more than you can afford to lose.

Thing 1: Bitcoin $7000

Hitting $7000 (USD) per Bitcoin seems like a really big deal, given our collective propensity to fall in love with large, round numbers.

Then, if you look back at past posts that talk about our BRED Portfolio, you’ll see that Bitcoin was at $4365 on October 1; this means that you could have brought home a 60 percent gain on your money in a shade more than a month.

That makes it a really HUGE deal.

Then, if you factor in the Bitcoin Cash (BCH) price plus consider the fact that one Bitcoin on January 1 of this year was $973, you’re actually sitting on at least a 6x return.

That is HUGH. MONGOUS.

But, in some respects, it is beside the point – the price of BTC doesn’t matter so much as the number of BTC you are able to accumulate.

You could possibly say that about dozens of coins or tokens – yes there will be some wheat and lots of chaff, but the super, blight-resistant, able to feed millions with one stalk kind of wheat that will emerge will be so valuable that the kings and queens of this new economy won’t much care the USD price.

Seriously – there’s a oft-repeated belief in the Bitcoin world that BTC is, indeed, going to $1 Million. Won’t be next year, in all likelihood (though stranger things have happened), and may not happen in the next twenty years. But it will happen.

We’ve had people ask two things: (1) is it too late to buy? and (2) is this a bubble? I’ll answer the first: no. Actually, let me be more emphatic: NO. If you’re not in the game, you’re not in the game – and because of the beauty of Bitcoin, you can drop $100 and get started and maybe trade a little or sock it away or whatever. (We recommend Coinbase, here’s an AFFILIATE LINK, and your $100 investment will get you a $10 bonus, something we’ll also get.)

But, wise sages at Metacoin HQ, is this a bubble?

Maybe it is. Maybe it isn’t. In some respects, that is not the point here – the point is that we are in accumulation mode, it’s a landgrab of sorts, and whether Bitcoin goes to $1 Million or drops to $1 might be beside the point. Here’s why:

Because of the way Bitcoin itself was set up and is structured and governed, 21,000,000 is the cap. No more will ever be issued.

While some are asking the bubble question, others – countless others – are building businesses and services and solutions that keep the Bitcoin movement alive and thriving. Bitcoin may end up being used to pay for cups of coffee, or it may end up being used to buy SUVs, or it may be replaced by an even better coin that is ubiquitous. In any event, if the price crashed today, the entire system wouldn’t immediately crash. Miners will still mine. Traders will still trade. Speculators will still speculate. If you think of Bitcoin as a country that has launched a brand new currency, maybe ask if anyone is using that currency or has the potential to use that currency. In that respect, we are just getting warmed up.

In other words…get in the game. Now.

[QUICK “SPONSOR BREAK” – If you haven’t signed up for the POW Token “Airdrop,” it’s not too late. Use this AFFILIATE LINK – POW Token Airdrop – then get ready for the next airdrop, coming next week.]

Thing 2: Bitpetite SCAM

Did we mention lately that this WHOLE THING is AN EXPERIMENT? Well it is.

As we’ve told you here a few times, we’ll put some of our own capital at risk with some of these Passive Income Platforms that we discuss. And, well, there seems to be a pretty below-average track record for these. Is it our luck? Is it the nature of the beast? Is it a combination?

The latest to go belly up is Bitpetite, and we’re annoyed – but not surprised. In fact, because of our experiments with Ambis and Control Finance and Bithaul, we have made it a habit of taking coins and tokens out at every opportunity. We encourage you to do the same.

We’re going to keep experimenting and putting our money at risk AND STRESSING THAT YOU SHOULD DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH AND PAST PERFORMANCE DOES NOT INDICATE FUTURE RESULTS.

We now have just one PIP that we’re using – Bitconnect – but we’re looking at a few more. Stay tuned.

Bitpetite is gone – and we apologize for linking to it and promoting it. As we said, it’s an experiment. These things could fizzle.

This gives us an opportunity to suggest that you spread out your risk. It’s really the only way to go – multiple baskets, multiple investments, and multiple streams of crypto income.

Thing 3: Crypto Legitimacy

Honestly, there may not have been a better piece of news than the CME group announcing that Bitcoin futures would be available by the end of the year. In fact, that alone might drive the legitimacy that the Winkelvoss brothers were waiting for when they applied to have their ETF traded.

We cannot underscore enough that, even if there’s a large pullback in the price of Bitcoin, and if Ethereum and Litecoin and Ripple and a bunch of altcoins follow…it might not matter a ton because Bitcoin, blockchains and cryptocurrencies are, indeed, here to stay.

We’ll give you one brief example: we’ve been talking about POW Token a bit, and one of the things that we’ve done on the site is “validate” users. We do this for small numbers of tokens – but we’ve also learned a ton about where these folks are coming from.

To validate folks, we have to click on their Facebook profile and find evidence that it wasn’t a Facebook profile that was just recently created to get free tokens.

And…they’re not. But that’s not the point: these folks are from everywhere. Asia. South America. Europe. The Middle East. Even a few Americans!

Whether or not POW Token will become the next world beater is not actually the question to ask: it’s whether or not cryptocurrencies have hit critical mass (they have) and whether or not there’s the potential for value to be exchanged and these things are easy to use (they are).

The takeaway? Folks, with all this…the belief is that we are just getting started. So glad you’re along for the roller coaster ride.

Nov 02 2017

POW Token – Another Airdrop Coming!

Quick post here for y’all…

A couple weeks ago, we told you about the POW Token Airdrop. It built some serious momentum but, as all things like this tend to do, petered out just a little. Plus, the value of the tokens seemed rather inflated, and they’ve come back to earth. But now, the folks behind POW Token are ready to roll…

This next airdrop moves beyond Facebook to Twitter. (You can even do some “retweeting” while you wait for the next airdrop – great way to earn tokens!)

Here are the instructions:

First of all, GET SOME POW TOKENS. Use this REFERRAL LINK if you haven’t already scored some: POW Token Link.
Follow them on Twitter: POW Token on Twitter.
Start checking back repeatedly on NOVEMBER 7, when they’ll tell you to log in using your Twitter credentials. The earlier in line you are, the better off you are.

This project will go as far as the network they build, so let’s spread the word!

Oct 17 2017

99 Days of Bitconnect

UPDATED ON NOVEMBER 2 – Bitconnect is still cool, but we’re striking through all the text about Bitpetite, which is a scam.

Here on the site, we’ve talked quite a bit about the concept of “Passive Income,” and, specifically, Passive Income Platforms (PIPs) where you can invest your coins or tokens and watch them make money for you.

We’ve also tried to be as upfront and transparent as possible. This approach, we think, lets us share with you a “warts and all” look at these PIPs and whether or not they might be worth your hard-earned Bitcoins.

We started our journey with Bitconnect (AFFILIATE LINK), and we’ve also tried a couple duds – “scams” is actually more accurate – like Bithaul (the image over there is what they SAY we have in our account right now, though we haven’t been able to withdraw for almost a month), or Control Finance (another dead site), or Ambis (SCAM).

(The only other platform that we’ve tried and can still vouch for is Bitpetite (AFFILIATE LINK), which continues to have a great track record for us. And we promise to try more of these in the days to come, with a report on them as we proceed.) Bitpetite is a SCAM.

Bitconnect remains the leader for us because of a couple of factors:

It is backed by an actual coin;
That coin has a large market cap;
There is a wide distribution, throughout the world, of Bitconnect users;
The track record of payouts is pretty strong (see chart below).

99 Days In…

Okay, the image we’re about to share will take a little scrolling on your part. It’s a screenshot of our Excel spreadsheet that tracks the amount of interest paid each day we’ve been part of the Bitconnect system. SO it’s 99 days of history, going back to July 10, when we got started. Let’s take a look:

Before we psychoanalyze this spreadsheet, we should probably give you a refresher on the basics.

For instance, you need to invest a minimum of $100 to get started. You need to convert Bitcoin into BCC, their coin, and then invest a round number in an increment of $10. We landed on $110 to get started because of exchange rates and whatnot on the day we invested.
$10 is a pretty important number for the site, too, because you can only reinvest in multiples of $10.
You are given the option to cash out your interest whenever; but we have chosen to reinvest it at each step of the way.
Since we’re not “whales” on the site – at least not yet – our investments and reinvestments are locked down for 299 days; to get your money back sooner, you will need to invest a minimum of $1010.

We’ve tried to manage this spreadsheet so that it’s obvious to us when we reach a milestone: the “Reinvest” column is highlighted when we reinvest into the system. Another key milestone for us was September 14: that’s the date we took some affiliate commissions from Bitpetite (AFFILIATE LINK; you, too, can sign up and get affiliates on the site and get commissions should you so choose) and invested them into Bitconnect. (That’s why the upper right corner, where it says “initial investments,” reads “$310.”) (ALSO, ignore the “Today’s Total” figure; we’ll fix once the coffee consumption is at normal levels.)

Pluses and Minuses

One thing you’ll need to consider here: are you better off parking some of your coins somewhere (like Bitconnect) or just keeping them in Bitcoins and doing nothing.

This is a legitimate question – we look at our own approach as “risk management” and we aren’t planning on putting all of our eggs in any one basket. Still…

This chart shows the Bitcoin price on July 10 – the day we got started on Bitconnect – and tells us that we would have also done well had we just taken $110 worth of Bitcoin and parked it in Bitcoin. At today’s price of around $5640, that’s more than a 132% return.

BUT, if you see look at our Excel chart above, you’ll see that we did just as well, in a shorter time frame, with our original investment; $110 had turned into $260 on Sept 13, the day before we dropped another $200 into the platform.

In addition to the other concerns that you should have with any Bitcoin-related investment – that you could lose your entire principal, that the site could disappear on you, that you’ll invest your time and money in something you’re better off avoiding – another concern is whether you are better off with the core coins (like our BRED Portfolio) as opposed to these passive income platforms.

This is a legitimate question – might end up being a “minus” in the grand scheme – if you take some of those Bitcoin estimates that are floating around and tease them out. For instance, one prognosticator we found on the internet made a semi-legitimate case for Bitcoin to hit $27,000 at some point in early 2018. By then, our original Bitconnect investment would be worth around $1500, but would pale in comparison to the same amount just parked in Bitcoin (which would quintuple in Q1 2018).

As Always, Watch Your Eggs

The multi-basket, disciplined approach is a good one; and there’s also something to be said for the fact that parking your Bitcoins at Bitconnect actually parks them for 299 days. It’s not like there’s a “substantial penalty for early withdrawal,” since there is, more accurately, “no possibility of early withdrawal.”

So we should summarize the same way we summarize all of our discussions of these platforms: Do Your Own Research, don’t invest more than you can afford to lose, manage your risk appropriately, and…good luck.