So you have already heard of Pipcoin and are wondering if it is a scam or legit? Please read this article before you take any further action. I present the facts so you can make up your own mind: Is Pipcoin scam or legit investment opportunity?



Who founded Pipcoin?

Pipcoin is the creation of David Schwartz and “Ref Wayne Nkele“ who founded the company. Although, no information can be found about David Schwartz, there is lot’s to be found about Ref Wayne the very vocal and flamboyant front man. So who exactly is he?

Ref Wayne got quite a bit of media coverage when he founded his company “African Forex Institute” at the time he was interviewed on a number of radio shows as South Africa’s youngest self made millionaire through forex trading. He used this newly gained reputation to travel the country teaching forex and in the process claiming to create many more overnight millionaires through the courses.

At around this same time, Sandile Shezi of the Global Forex Institute was coming under close scrutiny. They were charging people for the program (Around R4000) and upon closer inspection, most of the material used in his course was plagiarized, some of it taken from a famous FREE online forex website: BabyPips.com. Then there was this- R30m Account Mystery as reported by News24.

Ref Wayne surely saw this and decided he would need to change his game-plan and came up with another great money making scheme.

Enter Pipcoin, Scam or legit?

Using his social media following and newly found fame, Ref Wayne and co. launched what they claimed to be “Africa’s first cryptocurrency”. This new currency claimed to offer an enormous guaranteed monthly growth rate. Simply buy some Pipcoin and they will increase in value by 35%, month on month, without fail. On the 14th of Feb he had this interview on SABC.

When I first saw this interview, I thought to myself: “Cool, a cryptocurrency making the news on SA TV”, but upon closer inspection, I was horrified to find that this “Cryptocurrency” was actually not a cryptocurrency at all. A cryptocurrency by definition in open source and decentralized and runs on a blockchain. This Pipcoin, was completely closed source and centralized and there was no blockchain to speak of. Alarm bells began ringing in my head.

Instead of a trade-able cryptocurrency, all I could find was a website “platform” that allowed one to buy Pipcoin and then trade it again on the same platform to another user that is looking to join. They could not be transferred out of the platform, there were no wallets to download and no blockchain to view all the transactions on the network. Also there was no mining.(mining is the transparent process by which Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin come into circulation), you can find more info about mining Bitcoin here.)

I decided to do a bit of digging, you would think that a peer-to-peer system of this nature would take some serious development budget and some top notch developers, all I could find about it’s development was this project on freelancer.

I was surprised to see no mention of Blockchain, cryptocurrency and other peer-to-peer systems that would be needed for a project of this sort. Instead all it is is a platform whereby one can login, buy Pipcoin which magically grow by 1% per day and then sell them to another user who gets your details to make payment. Pipcoin is not decentralized at all, instead it is very much a centralized server based system.

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Pipchain.com

Pipcoin recently claimed they were launching their very own blockchain explorer similar to the likes of Blockchain.info where you can view all the transactions that are being propagated on the network. As one reddit user pointed out this was not it’s own Blockchain explorer at all! Instead it is an exact copy of Blockchain.info but with all instances of “Bitcoin” replaced with “Pipcoin”.

Even the news section is a joke, they are just Titles from real Bitcoin related articles from websites like “Let’s Talk Bitcoin” replaced with “Let’s Talk Pipcoin” (The article links don’t work by the way)

The Pipcoin Scam

I would avoid Pipcoin at all costs, there are too many discrepancies in what they claim to what actually is based on reviewing their platform. It’s quite clear how it actually works: You buy Pipcoin. Pipcoin magically increases in price by 35% per month as determined by the poorly built website. You sell the Pipcoin to the next sucker that joins.

Someday there will be no new chumps to join the program to buy your Pipcoins and your Pipcoins will then be worthless. A majority of people who join this scheme will lose money which they will never get back. In my opinion Pipcoin is a blatant scam and Ponzi scheme designed to defraud people of their money.

I hope that some people read this and realize the Pipcoin scam for what it is, if I saved even one person their hard earned money, I am a happy man.

So, what do you think, is Pipcoin a scam? Leave your comments below.