I knew Bitconnect was a scam and a running joke But I didn't know what exactly It did , So I looked into it.

I think we all have seen the Bitconnect jokes here but Since that didn't happen when I was active in crypto I didn't know what exactly the scam was So I thought of looking into it.

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Here is what I found:

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Bitconnect was an open-source crypto currency in 2016 to 2018 that promised high rates of interests on investment (Around 1% daily compound Interest)

It allowed users to trade their Bitcoins in exchange for the platform’s native token and earn interest in the process which was paid out in BCC(the platform's native currency) which could then be traded for Bitcoin or USD.

For example, investing $1,000 would theoretically lead to $50 million in returns within a period of three years.

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The platform claimed to have developed its own proprietary trading bot and volatility software that would automatically spot market opportunities.

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The company specifically targeted people whose financial literacy wasn’t likely to be high.

Dozens of influencers on YouTube and other platforms began heavily promoting BitConnect.

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In November 2017, Vitalik Buterin (founder of Ethereum) and Litecoin creator Charlie Lee began to publicly call out BitConnect on Twitter, alleging that the company is likely a scam. Around the same time, the U.K. Registrar of Companies threatened to shut down BitConnect and gave it two months to prove its legitimacy.

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Meanwhile, BitConnect remained unfazed and even announced that it planned to issue a second token, dubbed BCCX (short for BitConnectX9, in January 2018.

On January 5th, 2018, the Texas State Securities Board (TSSB) ordered BitConnect to cancel its planned token sale that was slated to take place five days later

On January 16th when BitConnect announced that it would shut down its lending platforms. It cited “continuous bad press” as well as multiple DDoS attacks as the reasons for its closure.

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BitConnect stated that users would be refunded at a rate of $363.62 (BCC’s average price over the previous 15 days), But the refund was to be done in BCC not USD or BTC and by then BCC's price had collapsed by more than 80%

So even if people got the same amount of BCC it was worth barely anything.

Throughout the next months, regulators across the world kept busy in dealing with the damage that BitConnect had caused.