On 16 January 2018 BitConnect made an official announcement on BitConnect.co, where they announced that they would close the BitConnect lending & exchange platform within 5 days.



Snapshot archive.org

Cease and desist orders

One of the reasons for the closure was that BitConnect received two cease and desist orders. One from the Texas State Securities Board, and one from the North Carolina Secretary of State Securities Division.



The emergency cease and desist order from the Texas State Securities Board

The other two reasons were the continuous “bad press” and the constant “DDoS attacks”. Among the critics were prominent figures in the cryptocurrency community, like Litecoin creator Charlie Lee and Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin.

I've been asked what I think about BitConnect. From the surface, seems like a classic ponzi scheme. I wouldn't invest in it and wouldn't recommend anyone else to.



I follow this rule of thumb:



"If it looks like a 🦆, walks like a 🦆, and quacks like a 🦆, then it's a ponzi." 😂 — Charlie Lee [LTC⚡] (@SatoshiLite) November 30, 2017

Yeah, if 1%/day is what they offer then that's a ponzi. — vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) November 2, 2017

We made an overview of the price during the period of the announcement, and the impact was immense:



2018-01-10 $ 302,19 2018-01-11 $ 322,98 2018-01-12 $ 318,02 2018-01-13 $ 293,36 2018-01-14 $ 256,07 2018-01-15 $ 19,28 2018-01-16 $ 22,48 2018-01-17 $ 37,38 2018-01-18 $ 29,11 2018-01-19 $ 21,81

Price information based on Coinmarketcap historical snapshots

After the announcement, BitConnect users were unable to exchange their BCC tokens back to Bitcoin so they lost their investments.



BitConnect X

Days before the closing announcement BitConnect had started an ICO for a (new) BitConnect coin: BitConnect X. They described BitConnect X as an “open-source, blockchain-based, decentralized cryptocurrency”. BitConnect X would be based on an automatic trading scheme, which would generate profits of more than 100%.



This new BitConnect token had it’s own website (including roadmap), and the ICO price was set at $ 50,- for 1 BCCX coin. Also, BitConnect gave BCC owners the option to buy BitConnect X tokens with their BCC.

The ICO ended but the BCCX tokens were never added to any exchange. They did have an active Twitter profile, with tweets about possible refunds, but we could not verify if these refunds ever really happened.

As you can imagine, loads of people lost a lot of money on BitConnect & BitConnect X.



Suicides

After BitConnect collapsed there have been multiple confirmed suicides. These were people who invested all of their savings into BitConnect hoping their investment would gain in value, but instead, they lost everything.

We’ve found multiple confirmed deaths related to BitConnect:

One confirmed suicide over Bitconnect. I cant make any more jokes about BCC after hearing this.#Cryptocurrency #altcoins $Crypto — Dr.Pikachu (@Dr_Pika_Chu) January 17, 2018

Disappearing

On the other hand, there has also been a suspicious disappearing in relation to a BitConnect promoter. This remarkable promoter was John Bigatton, the top Australian promoter of BitConnect. His wife mysteriously disappeared after BitConnect began to fall.



John Bigatton and his wife Madeline

On March 25, 2018, his wife went missing. At around 11:30 am, Madeline Bigatton got into her car with a beach bag and left with her youngest daughter. She drops off her daughter at a friend’s house and continued her way. A couple of hours later she sends a reminder to John to feed their dog. She didn’t get home that night.



Her car was found at a parking lot at Cape Solander. In the car, her wedding ring was found, and her keys were found a couple of meters away.



Picture of the Cape Solander cliffs

She was never found. Her family is still wondering whether she’s alive or not. They are not convinced she has committed suicide, because “she was a devout Catholic” and has beaten cancer twice.



A couple of days after John’s wife went missing, he uploaded a picture to Facebook. Acting as if nothing has happened, and moving on with life.



John Bigatton posting a selfie to Facebook, a couple of days after his wife went missing.

There are several scenarios that could have happened:

John & Madeline staged the incident so Madeline could take all the money and leave the country

John Bigatton killed his wife

His wife found out about the scale of his scamming, left everything behind to move on with her own life

Suicide

We would love to hear your thoughts about this case.

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