Disclosure: I didn’t invest anything in Bitconnect and thus didn’t lose any money, but I was scammed before and know exactly how it feels. All materials in this article are collected legally from public sources for “fair use” to warn people about scams and potentially to be used as evidence in the Federal lawsuits. I also own BTC, ETH, BCH, and other cryptos.

In this article we will look at all main Bitconnect promoters as well as critics, because community should know its heroes.

About Bitconnect

For those, who missed out the show: Bitconnect was a Ponzi scheme that started in 2016 presumably in South-East Asia and collapsed in January 2018. Around 1.5 million people across the world lost their money (sometimes life savings) after the collapse. Bitconnect was very shady from the start and it was constantly called out as a scam since June (8 months ago) or even earlier.

Yuris Praseta (Bitconnect development director)

In August 2017 (6 months ago) community already knew that Bitconnect had an anonymous owner, a fake company address in UK, a fake picture of an office space in Indonesia, and its development director Yuris Praseta (Indonesian hypnotist) previously promoted Ponzi scheme scams (archive) such as OneCoin/OneLife, which threatened all critics with litigation.

And as we know from Bitfinex/Tether experience, threatening critics with litigation is never a good move, so almost all OneCoin execs have already been arrested and recently OneCoin’s office was raided by Bulgarian police.

Every month there were new investigations about Bitconnect with evidences in favor of a Ponzi scheme, and famous figures in crypto space called it out as a scam.

Coinmarketcap advertised Bitconnect

There were many ads of Bitconnect on CMC (coinmarketcap), so new crypto investors thought that it was a legit project. It’s fair to mention that CMC didn’t choose their ads, but they could easily stop promoting Bitconnect at any time by contacting support or blacklisting advertiser URL.

In 2017 Redditors created many posts and petitions to stop CMC promoting Bitconnect or even delist it as other similar platforms did:

The problem with Bitconnect is that the data about their price comes from their own website they manage. That data can easily be manipulated since it’s not even a 3rd party. So you are trusting a ponzi scheme to provide accurate data about their own coins being traded. I get it, the stupid people should lose their money. But CMC is actively and knowingly promoting a scam and making money off of others who will lose money. (By romromyeah)

CMC didn’t block Bitconnect (BCC), nor other Ponzi scheme scams because that could lower their earnings and CMC continued advertising BCC even after the crash, so as a result community exploded with negative posts and proposed many other alternatives, some of which even have better features than CMC:

Bitconnect promoters

Most YouTube promoters of Bitconnect didn’t have any financial background, were new to investing or cryptocurrencies, didn’t teach their followers about importance of diversification or risk-management. However, they convinced many people to sign up under their affiliate links and earned millions from referrals by using misleading video titles, while most of them didn’t even get back their initial investments and earned everything just from referrals.

After Bitconnect crash many of them started promoting similar MLM lending platform DavorCoin that offers even more interests per day and looks even more scammy.

There were many Bitconnect promoters and most of them have already deleted those videos, so here is a list of the most influential promoters on YouTube (many subscribers, views and videos).

Craig Grant is a “godfather” of Bitconnect, was promoting it from April 2017, earned millions from affiliates and threatened Bitconnect critics after Doug Polk Crypto uploaded a video with faces of Trevon James and CryptoNick on the thumbnail.

Craig was alleged being involved in Nigerian catfish scam that lead to a man killing himself, which got a big media exposure. The whole story is very shady, and Craig admitted receiving 10% from all those scams but later said that he was lying.

Craig even has a journalist that followed him for 6 years, trying to expose his scam activities. And somebody is uploading crazy videos from Craig’s past on a dedicated YouTube channel.

Craig Grant has been sued.

Trevon James actively promoted Bitconnect, earned millions from affiliates. After the crash recommended people to hold BCC, because in 6 months price will be back where it was. He also disabled all comments, voting, and started promoting DavorCoin.

Trevon James has been sued.

CryptoNick (17 year old) actively promoted Bitconnect for 7 months and earned ~$1 million from referrals. He deleted all his Bitconnect videos (YT) shortly after the crash, and didn’t apologize for promoting it.

CryptoNick has been sued.

Ryan Hildreth actively promoted Bitconnect since summer 2017, after the crash deleted most Bitconnect videos.

Ryan Hildreth has been sued.

Crypto Clover actively promoted Bitconnect since summer 2017, visited its meetups and office in Vietnam.

Crypto Clover has not been sued yet.

Crypto Jay actively promoted Bitconnect since July, he was targeting more intelligent audience and even trolled Trevon James. Before promoting Bitconnect he once invested all his savings in some MLM which crashed a week later, so he promised to himself “to never do that to somebody”. Recently he also started promoting DavorCoin (archive).

Once he said literally “I personally believe that Bitconnect will be around for 12 to 18 months” basically admitting that it’s a scam that will crash.

Worth mentioning that unlike other so-called “dump promoters”, he actually taught his audience about diversification, so people can lower their risks.

Actually, wait… all top coins from his list are MLM Ponzi scheme scams with his referral links in the description, 3 of 4 crashed within two months and USI Tech might go South soon.

He is more intelligent than other promoters and chooses words carefully, so even after the Bitconnect crash, his new videos didn’t get so much dislikes and angry comments, and he made portfolio for 2018 less scammy than before.

After litigations on Bitconnect promoters started, he tried to withdraw himself from this situation telling that he won’t promote lending platforms anymore and disabled comments.

Some people find him even more dangerous than “dump promoters”, because he has better persuasion skills and convinced more financially literate victims.

Crypto Jay has not been sued yet, and he probably lives in South-East Asia (a tan skin in winter, sounds of roosters on the background and he was giving speeches in Indonesia and prefers Singapore timezone).

The Crypto Challenge actively promoted Bitconnect since November 2017. One of his Bitconnect videos got 250K views, where he promoted going all-in.

The Crypto Challenge has not been sued yet.

The Crypto Chick actively promoted Bitconnect, after the crash deleted all her Bitconnect videos, but many people started reuploading her videos.

Right after the crash she also uploaded video admitting that she knew all allegations against Bitconnect and hoped that it won’t collapse so soon. A bit later she deleted this video, but it was reuploaded by another YouTuber and later deleted again (may be due to copyright claim from The Crypto Chick).

The Crypto Chick has not been sued yet.

Aaron St. Hilaire actively promoted Bitconnect (since summer 2017), DavorCoin and lots of other shady lending platforms (archive).

Aaron St. Hilaire has not been sued yet.

There were many other less influential YouTube promoters of Bitconnect, so redditors created a list of crypto Ponzi schemes and people promoting them (the list of promoters was temporary removed, but companies are still there).

Bitconnect day-trades for you

Bitconnect didn’t bring any innovation or try to solve real-life problems like most other legit projects do. They raised huge capital with MLM and claimed that mysterious trading bot was using it to take advantage of crypto market price volatility.

The main argument against existence of a trading bot was that it should suffer from slippage when more people lend money to Bitconnect. There were ~1,5 million lenders, so if we assume $1,000 to be an average investing sum, then a bot should trade with ~$1,5 billion sum, which will cause an insane slippage at the level of liquidity that crypto market currently has.

Fair to mention, that if the person behind Bitconnect was manually trading, then he could use large sums and whales techniques on unregulated market in his favor. For example, he could manipulate the prices (Spoofy, Picasso) or exploit system vulnerabilities to trigger multiple flash crashes.

Bitfinex knows exactly who triggered two waves of multiple flash crashes, but they won’t collaborate on that, since many whales are its shareholders, so this will stay as a conspiracy theory unless there will be a data leak.

In the best scenario (if trading bot was real) people lent money to Bitconnect to profit from newbie crypto investors who buy high and sell low because of no experience.

If the man behind Bitconnect was trading manually, then these money were probably used to manipulate the market or even trigger flash crashes, because otherwise it’s hard to make such big gains with huge sums due to slippage.

In the worst scenario it was just a Ponzi scheme that will collapse and it did.

Former Bitconnect promoters turned into critics

Sunny Decree promoted Bitconnect till November 18 and earned at least $50K from 461 referrals (on 8/11/17), then changed his opinion after making a better research, deleted all referral links, recommended not to invest any money in Bitconnect and started to criticize it in further videos. However, he didn’t delete his account and continued to get referral money even after officially “quiting” Bitconnect. Some people think that he did SYA, but at least he made many videos exposing scams (mostly lending platforms) and thus saved many people from getting rekt.

The Bitcoin Party is very controversial, he did one of the first investigations about Bitconnect, and found out many similarities with OneCoin and called it a scam, but yet he continued to promote a Bitconnect with his referral links.

Bitconnect critics

There were lots of YouTubers who criticized Bitconnect and called it a ponzi scheme, most of early critics got many dislikes. Let’s list the most influential of them in a chronological order.

August 15, 2017 — Is Bitconnect a Scam?

September 5, 2017 — Bitconnect scam alert! Is this 800 million dollar cryptocurrency a ponzi scheme?

October 8, 2017 — Is Bitconnect A SCAM?

November 26, 2017 — Bitconnect’s Craig Grant and Yuliana Involved in a Catfish SCAM?

November 2, 2017 — The Bitconnect Youtube Scam — Think Thursday

November 8, 2017 — Was I Wrong About Bitconnect? Youtube Scam Followup — Recap Wednesday

November 6, 2017 — Here’s why BitConnect is a scam

November 16, 2017 — Bitconnect Review Scam EXPOSED!

November 21, 2017 — Bitconnect Review — THE FALL OF BITCONNECT — All Top Earners Cashing Out

November 21, 2017 — The Collapse of Bitconnect & Tether is Coming

November 25, 2017 — REALIST NEWS — Bitconnect THE WORST investment ever? — Should have just held your Bitcoins

January 2, 2018 — THE TRUTH About BitConnect, CryptoNick, Trevon James, and Craig Grant

A big shout out to everybody else, who didn’t afraid to explain to people why Bitconnect was a scam. You literally saved so many people from getting rekt!

Bitconnect scapegoats and directors

People behind Bitconnect raised many scapegoats, so those who pulled the strings are still safe, while the crowd is lynching 17 year old guy and other folks. More than that, major players raised funds with a new BitconnectX ICO so they can fly even more jets.

Fortunately, some people understand that and hired private investigators and set bounty rewards trying to find high-level directors who might eventually lead to owners of Bitconnect.

Glenn Arcaro is listed as one of 13 Bitconnect directors, which he denies. Before Biconnect, he was heavily promoting Control-Finance MLM scam and when it crashed, he took no responsibility for referring there his audience.

Glenn cashed out from Bitconnect in October (3 months ago) and after the crash he deleted his instagram page, removed YouTube videos from his channel and now is trying to take down all YouTube videos that alleged him in being a Bitconnect director or shareholder. He files copyright claims and threatens to sue Badisse David Mehmet for defamation.

Badisse David Mehmet is one of the victims who lost $142,000 in Bitconnect and organized a class-action lawsuit against Bitconnect and its U.S.-based directors and promoters. Badisse has legal background and once sued Paypal for fraud and defamation.

If you also lost money in Bitconnect, you can get a free consultation here.

Badisse David Mehmet with a team identified most Bitconnect directors and created a website FindTheCriminal.com