Control Finance

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.

Sep 25 2017

It’s Not A Comeback, But…

If you’ve been following our Passive Income journey, you know that Control Finance went belly up a little while back.

We immediately considered that money gone; despite the initial word on the site that the folks were aiming to protect their good name, when the site completely went dark, that money is as good as gone.

Then, A Funny Thing Happened…

We found a video on YouTube from BitBeauty, and it sounds like Control Finance is paying some people back.

It’s not the only video talking about getting Control Finance money back; so it does actually appear that there are some users getting a return of their capital.

A Cautionary Tale…

This brings us back to what we’ve said from the get-go on any of these platforms:

Don’t invest more than you can afford to lose. Our investment into Control Finance was a whopping $100. It won’t kill us – and we were, as we said a bunch of times, “experimenting.”
Do Your Own Research. DYOR is a very popular crypto acronym. It means that, if you learn about any program, or coin, or token, don’t just dive in without at least sniffing around a few other sites to see what’s going on.
Spread out your risk. We had a post on risk management a couple weeks back – if you have all of your eggs in one basket, you’re likely to be in a little bit of trouble.

And, We’ve Only Scratched the Surface

While we think we’ve developed a pretty okay body of knowledge here on the PIPs – Passive Income Platforms – we’re not anywhere near able to track them all.

We’re working on it, but it’s going to take us a little bit of time.

Sep 14 2017

UPDATED Control Finance News: Site Down, It’s a Scam

UPDATED SEPTEMBER 14, 2017

We’re going to officially call it: Control Finance is a scam.

After the below from earlier this week (we’ve left the text as is), we tried to visit the website yesterday several times. It’s down – and likely out.

Score one for the scammers.

**Original Text from Tuesday.**

Control Finance is today’s culprit and, as was the case with a couple other of these online investment platforms, we’re going to chalk this up as Metacoin “taking one for the team.”

What Happened?

Yesterday, Control Finance shut down its Facebook and Twitter presence. This occurred after sending rather cryptic notes about suspending withdrawals, system problems, etc.

Today, Control Finance sent an email to all of its investors, and here’s the unedited text:

We would like to inform you of the urgent news. Our lawyers received information about the conditions for unlocking all trading accounts of the company. One of them is getting the necessary package of documents and license. This will allow us to restore access to our accounts and conduct our trading activities on the crypto-currency markets completely legally.

Blocking of accounts at the moment and suspension of payments is considered to be a force majeure situation. In this connection, we are forced to fulfill our obligations to clients.

This will be organized in the form of, payment of the customer’s deposit (taking into account already previously paid applications for payment of profit on deposits), i.е. according to the formula:

The deposit minus the amount of all applications, for the payment of profits, is equal to the balance for payment. All payments will be made in 45 days and extend until the end of October.

The site will temporarily stop working, but all customer databases with their payment and contact details will be stored on a separate server of the company, this will make all payments to our customers.

Since November, our company will resume its work in a fully legal regime, when all necessary documents will be received and the frozen accounts of the company will be unblocked.

As general director of the company, I ask you to keep your peace of mind and wait for the payment. The first payments were already made on September 11 and will continue, until the end of October. I want to keep my honest name and the name of our company. I will prove that you can trust me and the company.

Puzzling…On a Couple Levels

First up, the email came from an address that was, simply, “admin.” No name attached.

Second, this looks confusing as heck – if you’re us, and you put in $100, but then “earned” $40 and change in profits, does that mean you’re only getting $60 back, since “the deposit, minus the amount of all applications, for the payment of profits, is equal to the balance for payment”?

We assume that the guy with the “honest name” that we can trust is “Benjamin Reynolds,” the gentleman whose name is attached to the Skype account we’re asked to reach out to. (We did reach out to Benjamin Reynolds via Skype, and have not received a response.)

Caveat Emptor

With any and all of these Passive Income Platforms we’re experimenting with here, you have to have a certain amount of faith that things will work out. And you have to assume that you’re going to say goodbye to your money – these are not regulated financial instruments, and it’s the Wild Wild West here.

We’ll keep you posted on any further developments – and what, if anything, we receive back from our investment in Control Finance.

Aug 22 2017

The ABCs of Passive Crypto Income

EDITOR’S NOTE: On August 22, we were able to learn a few more things about AMBIS, the business referenced below as the “A” in the “ABCs.” We’ll share those below in the section marked “ABCs – A is for AMBIS.”

As a result of our continued due diligence, we have no choice but to remove all affiliate links for the AMBIS program. We’ll explain the reasons below.

Bitcoin, the original “cryptocurrency,” spawned hundreds of other currencies, but it also spawned a few other ways to potentially earn passive income through your crypto investments.

Since we’ve been at it here – this website goes back to March of this year, you can read our first post here, and “my how we’ve grown” – we’ve been able to try out quite a few sites that can potentially add passive crypto income to our wallets (and, of course, to yours as well). They fall into two general categories: (1) Lending and Volatility Trading and (2) Mining and Staking.

This post will walk through the ABCs of Passive Crypto Income but, to be honest, we’re more familiar with the machinations of category (1): Lending and Volatility Trading. We’ve dabbled in mining and staking sites, and we’ll continue to do that as the days go by. But, since we know more about lending, bot trading, and using volatility to your advantage, we’ll devote most of our time to that. (We’ll give you a link to two mining/staking programs that you can explore on your own; we promise a more exhaustive study in the next few weeks.)

Throughout this post, you’ll find AFFILIATE LINKS and banner ads – clicking on them and signing up through them can give us an affiliate commission, and we’re most grateful for your support. The more signups, the more time we can devote to continuing to study this space, and the more valuable information we can continue to bring you.

It’s time, though, for the CAVEAT and DISCLOSURE stuff: this is not investment advice, not trading advice, and you should seek the counsel of an investment professional, a financial professional, and your tax and legal counsel. Past performance does not guarantee future results. Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies are highly speculative instruments – do not spend more on them than you can afford to lose.

Let’s Begin: Lending and Volatility Trading Explained

If you’re familiar with Michael Lewis’s book Flash Boys, you know that there’s serious money to be made with high-frequency trading. Buying and selling securities – even sometimes the same security – over and over again, even with tiny profits of pennies per trade, can lead to huge profits.

Bots have taken over the stock world: automated trading strategies, featuring algorithms that look for those edges and take advantage of them, are really nothing new.

So imagine a world that is closer to the Wild, Wild West, in that these are currencies and tokens that are not regulated, decentralized, and entirely made up of ones and zeros. It should be no surprise that bots are trading crypto over and over and over again. And that’s where these platforms enter the picture.

Why ABCs?

Ah, another method to our madness: three sites that we will share these AFFILIATE LINKS for start with those letters:

A is for AMBIS – which we can no longer recommend, see details below
B is for Bitconnect
C is for Control Finance

But the one we’ll focus on in this explanation is Bitconnect. Here’s a flashy banner ad for ya:

The reason we’ll start with Bitconnect is because they appear to be leading the industry, and that’s due in no small part to the coin that powers Bitconnect, BCC.

Its market cap as of this writing is rather huge ($658m) and its supply is low (6 million and change), which helps us to breathe easier.

Bitconnect calls it “Lending” because you are actually loaning BCC coins to them for them to power the volatility trading software. There is a term for the deposit you make; depending upon the dollar value (minimum of $100), your deposit is locked up for as many as 299 days.

In exchange for your lending your coins to them, they pay you interest on your deposit.

Here’s a chart of their recent interest payments:

Time for the caveat about language: we’re dealing with sites that are decentralized – Bitconnect’s most recent confab was in Thailand, so that’s the best guess as to where the closest thing to its nerve center might be – and ones whose websites are likely written by committee, written by computer programmers, and not written in plain English. I think the last sentence is actually the opposite of what’s at work here: if there is more volatility, there tends to be more interest paid back.

Here come the obvious questions:

If this is interest paid out DAILY, how in the heck is this possibly sustainable? How do I know this isn’t a pyramid or a Ponzi scheme?

Well…

There is no guarantee that any of this isn’t a house of cards. I’ll give you a couple reasons why it is likely legitimate – but I will also stress the fact that, with ANYTHING IN BITCOIN AND CRYPTOCURRENCY YOU MUST USE CAUTION.

Reason 1: Options and Derivatives

I look at these animals as somewhere in the same phylum as options and derivatives. In those cases, you’re not actually owning the security, but you’re owning a certificate that either gives you the right to purchase the security (an option), or a stake in a pool of whatever asset you’re getting a derivative of.

If you’re loaning your bitcoins to one of these platforms, you are sorta kinda purchasing an option or a derivative – it might be closer to, let’s say, a “Gold ETF.” It’s set to the price of gold and it is maybe a demand deposit in that you have $100 of gold if you have $100 of a gold ETF, but no one ever actually asks them to shave off the exact amount of gold.

Reason 2: Verified Returns

I’m a small player here – what is called in the trading vernacular “a minnow” – but I have 38 days worth of results to at least look at.

Here’s a snapshot from the Bitconnect site itself:

(Yes, I took a screenshot at the exact moment the site was refreshing.)

Here’s a copy of my Excel spreadsheet, showing where we started (July 10) and where it stands now:

I’ll talk a little more about the details below. But I want to share reason three next:

Reason 3: The Underlying Coin and the Blockchain

This is why I give Bitconnect the most ringing endorsement of the three lending and volatility trading sites I am using: the underlying coin (BCC) and the blockchain itself.

There is no argument that there’s more than enough froth in this market behind ICOs (Initial Coin Offerings), token sales, and cryptocurrency startups. The perception is that some of these ICOs are nothing more than the sock puppet behind Pets.com – limited business acumen, not much of a business plan, and a whole lot of buzz that eventually leads to an implosion.

In the case of Bitconnect, as we mentioned above, their coin is large. It is of course possible that their coin’s value could implode, or that Bitcoin’s value could implode, or both things could happen at the same time. But with the inflation control put in place in their own coin, and the inflation control in Bitcoin itself, stability – while not guaranteed – is more likely to happen with Bitconnect.

Then, once you have all transactions visible on the blockchain – as is the case with AMBIS and Control Finance and yes, those are AFFILIATE LINKS – you have less potential for an overnight disappearance.

Once again, and I’m going to say it over and over, these sites are not without risk. The blockchain and cryptocurrency is not without risk. So we’re presenting all of this information to help you potentially manage your risks; you will need to make your own decision as to whether you have the appetite for these sites.

Back to Bitconnect (the “B” in the “ABCs”)

You’ll see on the spreadsheet that I invested $110 on the 10th of July, then invested $20 again on the 26th of July. That was a “newbie error” on my part.

With Bitconnect, you need to manage your own account, and you are responsible for compounding the interest if you so choose. (We don’t have to tell you about compound interest and that Einstein said it was the most marvelous thing ever.) Bitconnect’s minimum reinvestment is $10, and reinvestments must be in multiples of $10.

We mentioned that your funds are locked down, but your interest isn’t. You can choose to reinvest it, or you can take the money out and do as you please. We choose to compound it because, let’s face it, that’s where the potential for real growth is.

Each reinvestment is, in effect, a new loan to the platform – and you’ll have to decide if you want your money locked up for, in this case, 299 days.

If you’re a “whale,” you may see value in holding onto your interest until you can invest a large enough sum to get the daily bonus. We’ve seen folks do that – and you can do the cost/benefit analysis of time vs. returns. You might not want your funds held up for the better part of a year, and that’s cool. Your call; we haven’t achieved whale status yet, so we haven’t done that math.

As we mentioned last week on this site, this is an experiment. Heck, all of crypto is an experiment. As for Bitconnect, it gets our largest thumbs up of the three sites.

Here’s that banner ad again if you want to sign up:

ABCs: A is for AMBIS (Updated August 22)

After further due diligence – as referenced above – we decided to remove the affiliate links.

We cannot recommend this program, for the following reasons:

They are not up front about the fact that they keep your Bitcoin. The phrase “Principal is locked forever” appears only on the front page of the site – it should be a more blatant warning, in our opinion.
Returns are only valid for a seven-day period (in our case). After that, you’re relegated to a 1% interest – still not bad, but…
The “Principal is locked forever” really does smart. Bitconnect will give you your money back after a period of time (120 days is the shortest), and Control Finance APPEARS to allow you to withdraw your money.
What else gives us extreme pause? The CEO, “Bradley Gough,” is a tough person to actually find on LinkedIn or anywhere else – and the company makes him sound like some sort of Bitcoin guru.

The heart of the team is our CEO, Mr. BRADLEY GOUGH. He’s been dealing with Bitcoin & Blockchain since 2011 & his ideas have always been innovative & ahead of time. AmBIS start was planned by him back in 2010 when he attended a conference dedicated to new Blockchain startups. It’s since 2010 that he’s been working on the concept with 2 more developers, Jan Grunnis & Mike Pearson, who have coded the main product of today’s Ambis – the perfect Bitcoin trading bot – AmbisBot.

Other partners in the team are Jack Wonderbilt, Tim Hankins, Lara Copeman & Dennis Krongmann. They are responsible for marketing & finance & report directly to CEO. We’ll be expanding our team in the near future.

Words like “perfect” are always tough to live up to.

IMHO, stay far away. We cannot recommend Ambis.

ABCs: C is for Control Finance

This one falls somewhere in between Bitconnect and AMBIS: Control Finance (AFFILIATE LINK) has pluses and minuses that give us a little more pause than Bitconnect, and less pause than AMBIS.

Pluses:

The interest rate is a sustainable 1%.
Website might be the slickest of the three.
Name is okay and at least doesn’t make you start Googling for the acronym (like we did with AMBIS; something about Automation and Bitcoin and Investments).

Minuses:

Instead of locking down your Bitcoin for a fixed term, you get the 1% for as long as you have an account.
Their banner ads are so over-the-top that I won’t share them.
Language skills are really pretty bad.

AMBIS has a US LLC – whether that puts your mind at ease, I don’t know – and Control Finance is incorporated in the UK.

Screenshots for this one:

We started small here: our original investment, counting transaction fees, was $105.31 worth of Bitcoin; while we put in $103.46 (good work finding low transaction fees, eh?) we received a bonus of $3.10 for signing up. Our starting balance was $106.56 on the site (so the bonus paid for our transaction fees and a little bit more).

Net net? We are up 6.34% in just a week.

We set this one to compound automatically, so we’re good on that front. We’ll just have to see how this one grows, too.

Other Thoughts on Passive Income

Passive income platforms abound in just about every industry – so it makes sense that these would start to follow in crypto. You’re going to have to ask yourself whether you want to focus on building a team (which is common in multi-level marketing, or MLM) or just sharing knowledge and looking for people to use your affiliate link.

In either case: this is actual work. For instance, I’ve lost track of the hours I’ve devoted to studying and researching the cryptocurrency space. I’m more than happy to walk folks through the basics – I did that just this week with a friend who was making his first purchase with Coinbase (yes, another AFFILIATE LINK), and it honestly doesn’t concern me so much if someone decides this whole crypto world isn’t their cup of tea. Or if they get into one of these programs and use their own affiliate or referral link so they can be compensated.

Two things I’ll suggest – and this is not investment advice or legal advice or any of that:

Spread out your risk. Gosh, we’ve probably talked about that throughout our journey here. If you have all of your eggs in any basket, that could spell trouble.
Do the math but don’t get carried away. You can find tons of videos on YouTube that talk about the staggering compound interest possibilities here. All can cause for minor heart palpitations – the good kind – but there’s, again, tremendous risk in cryptocurrency.

Wow…More than 2000 Words!

That’s right, we’ve told you lots about this world. And we’re here for questions: be sure to follow TeamMetacoin on Twitter and Facebook for more insights.

Aug 10 2017

On Testing and Learning

If you think you have all the answers, you probably haven’t asked the right questions.

I don’t know where I first heard that maxim, but boy does it apply to cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, and this learning experiment of ours.

What…you don’t think this is an experiment? This entire space is an experiment: the whole concept of Bitcoin is only eight years old, and the goal posts continue to move. We’re ten days into August of 2017, a month that began with The Great Fork and launched a new currency that seemed headed for the stratosphere – and then came back down to earth – and then the mother ship that launched it decided it would reach for new heights.

If you’re not Testing and Learning, then you’re probably doomed to fail. And if you think you have all the answers, start asking more questions.

Exhibit A: Altcoin Du Jour

Each day brings with it a new “Altcoin” that will take off – if you believe the Twitter experts – and if you don’t get in on the ground floor of this coin, be prepared to cry a river once those early adopters pump it and sell it for their Lamborghini. (We’ve taken to calling them “Lambo Coins,” because that seems to be the auto of choice for the crypto people.)

But…

The prevailing wisdom – and I tend to believe this – is that, of the hundreds of coins and tokens out there, once we’re past bubble territory, a handful of them will be worth something. The rest? Dust. Vapor. Ones and zeros.

We’re not near bubble territory yet, though – and that still creates opportunities for even the most casual of traders.

Which is where the “test and learn” concept comes in. If you’ve been following this site at all, you know we have a couple of hypothetical portfolios; these experiments have ranged from one that does okay (the Hedge Fund) all the way up to one that would have made tons of money (the BRED Portfolio).

You also know that we’ve shared some other experiments – posts on coins that COULD go stratospheric, and lists of coins that we think might be good fits for a more speculative portfolio.

And these range in success from okay down to meh.

Because it’s an experiment.

Exhibit B: Passive Crypto Income

That’s probably the best category to call these other things, lending/interest platforms like Bitconnect (which we told you about a couple of times and which we’re still monitoring; use that AFFILIATE LINK to get started if you want to try it out for yourself) and its competitor Control Finance (which we’re investigating as we speak; it appears to be free to sign up, so we have an AFFILIATE LINK over there for that one, too). Or there’s a mining program called Microhash that we just signed up for yesterday. (AFFILIATE LINK.)

Since we’re still learning, we’re asking some questions about these particular platforms:

Are they legitimate?
Are the revenue projections realistic?
What’s the potential for anyone to take their blocks and go home?

Answers:

Well, they appear to be…as far as we can tell from what we’re finding on the internet…but things aren’t always what they seem, right?
Well, that’s an interesting question…we don’t know, and it might take a while for us to find out.
We’re quite familiar with Mt. Gox – that’s ALWAYS a risk.

The issues, for this site and your intrepid reporter/guinea pig, stem from sustainability – are these platforms really creating systems that can allow someone to passively, casually, create the kind of income that could be life-changing? And, if they do, can they continue ad infinitum? Or will there be a crash and burn element that is going to get ugly?

The more that I study this space, the more I believe the following:

Bitcoin, the blockchain, and the cryptocurrency industry together create the potential for the largest transfer of wealth in human history.

But…it is still an experiment.

What’s The Point?

Sitting on the sidelines may be an option for you. Some people do prefer just casually going about their business while small changes happen around them; and maybe those small changes won’t turn into big changes.

But for us…the answers are out there, and we plan on testing and learning and asking more questions as the days go by.

Join us.