EthTrade Club provide details of an executive team on their website.

As below however, images used to represent EthTrade Club’s executive team are stolen from Fivver members:

One can safely assume the names provided for EthTrade’s executives also don’t exist.

The EthTrade Club website domain (“ethtrade.club”) was privately registered on January 6th, 2018.

At the time of publication Alexa estimate that over 50% of traffic to the EthTrade website originates out of Spain.

This suggests that whoever is actually running EthTrade might be based out Spain too.

Update 7th September 2018 – Jonathan Martin (aka Jonathan Marti) has emerged as a prominent EthTrade Club insider.

Martin features in official EthTrade Club corporate marketing videos. He has also hosted official EthTrade Club events in Spain.

At the time of publication nobody has been identified higher than Martin within EthTrade Club’s corporate structure. For all intents and purposes Martin appears to be running the company.

Prior to EthTrade Club, Martin was promoting the AiYellow pyramid scheme. /end update

As always, if an MLM company is not openly upfront about who is running or owns it, think long and hard about joining and/or handing over any money.

EthTrade Club Products

EthTrade Club has no retailable products or services, with affiliates only able to market EthTrade Club affiliate membership itself.

The EthTrade Club Compensation Plan

EthTrade affiliates invest 0.05 ETH or more on the promise of

a 20% ROI monthly for two months or

a 25% ROI monthly for four months

Referral commissions are paid out via a unilevel compensation structure.

A unilevel compensation structure places an affiliate at the top of a unilevel team, with every personally recruited affiliate placed directly under them (level 1):

If any level 1 affiliates recruit new affiliates, they are placed on level 2 of the original affiliate’s unilevel team.

If any level 2 affiliates recruit new affiliates, they are placed on level 3 and so on and so forth down a theoretical infinite number of levels.

EthTrade Club initially pay referral commissions on both invested funds and ROI payouts on three unilevel team levels:

level 1 (personally recruited affiliates) – 3% on both invested funds and ROI payouts

level 2 – 2% on invested funds and 1% on ROI payouts

level 3 – 1% on both invested funds and ROI payouts

EthTrade Club affiliates who meet additional qualification criteria earn increased referral commission rates.

HomeStead

Homestead affiliates must either invest 0.5 ETH or convince others to invest 5 ETH or more.

level 1 – 7% on invested funds and 5% on ROI payouts

level 2 – 3% on both invested funds and ROI payouts

level 3 – 1% on both invested funds and ROI payouts

Metropolis

Metropolis affiliates must either invest 3 ETH or convince others to invest 27 ETH or more.

level 1 – 10% on invested funds and 7% on ROI payouts

level 2 – 3% on both invested funds and ROI payouts

level 3 – 1% on invested funds and 3% on ROI payouts

levels 4 and 5 – 1% on both invested funds and ROI payouts

Serenity

Serenity affiliates must either invest 9 ETH or convince others to invest 90 ETH or more.

level 1 – 10% on both invested funds and ROI payouts

level 2 – 5% on both invested funds and ROI payouts

levels 3 and 4 – 3% on both invested funds and ROI payouts

level 5 – 1% on invested funds and 3% on ROI payouts

Co-founder

Co-founder affiliates must either invest 27 ETH or convince others to invest 450 ETH or more.

level 1 – 12% on invested funds and 10% on ROI payouts

level 2 – 5% on invested funds and 7% on ROI payouts

level 3 – 3% on invested funds and 5% on ROI payouts

levels 3 and 4 – 3% on both invested funds and ROI payouts

Joining EthTrade

EthTrade affiliate membership is free, however free affiliates only earn base referral commissions.

Full participation in the EthTrade Club MLM opportunity requires a minimum 0.05 ETH investment.

Conclusion

EthTrade Club claim to generate external ROI revenue through “ethereum smart contracts”.

To that end the company provides weekly PDF files detailing random transactions in ethereum.

EthTrade Club represent the random transactions are profitable ethereum trades used to fund ROI payments, however no evidence other than assertions by the company are provided.

Alone these assertions are questionable at best. When combined with intentionally provided fraudulent company management profiles, they’re meaningless.

The only verifiable source of revenue entering EthTrade Club is new affiliate investment.

Using newly invested funds to pay existing affiliates a monthly ROI makes EthTrade Club a Ponzi scheme.

Recruitment commissions paid out add an additional pyramid layer to the scheme.

As with all MLM Ponzi schemes, once affiliate recruitment slows down so too will new investment.

This will starve EthTrade Club of ROI revenue, eventually prompting a collapse.

The math behind a Ponzi scheme guarantees that when it collapses, the majority of investors lose money.

Like most cryptocurrency MLM Ponzi schemes, much emphasis is placed on EthTrade Club supposedly “operating on the blockchain”.

We use a smart contract for Ethereum, as a guarantor that nothing will happen to your funds. Because your funds are not stored by us, but on Ethereum smart contract. Each partner can track all the information in the blockchain.

What this actually means is that once EthTrade Club collapses and its anonymous owners do a runner, investors will be able to see exactly how much they’ve collectively lost.

Blockchain or not, they’ll still have no recourse against EthTrade Club or the scammers running it.