Today I turn 50. In half a century, I've found nothing truer than this adage. If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck. What I've also learned over the years is that situations are what you make of them.
A good example of this is Gladiacoin. Back in April I started to see a friend post "Double your money in 90 days". After a few post I decided to ask him more about this. He was promoting Gladiacoin where you invest anywhere from .05 bitcoin up to 4 bitcoin. With this investment, an autotrader will trade your bitcoin around the clock and return a minimum of 2.2% trader bonus everyday. On top of that if you built a team below you you will get what they call a binary bonus. At 2.2% your investment will double in 90 days passively. With the binary bonus the time can be shortened drastically provided you build up your downline.
Gladiacoin Looks like a ponzi scheme, acts like a ponzi scheme and as it turns out is nothing more than a ponzi scheme. Back in April I decided to get in with a 1 bitcoin stake. All the warning flags were there
- No contact information on the website
- No names associated with the company. The domain name is registered anonymously. Not even a phone number or email address to contact someone.
- No product or service associated with the program
- No cause associated with the program
- High rewards, low risks
- In general high returns are associated with high risks. Take lottery tickets for example, they have high risk and high reward. On the other hand government bonds have low risk and low rewards.
- Very consistent returns
- complex and secret strategies
- It's an anonymous scripted auto trader I was told when I asked my upline. What does that even mean?
- It's an anonymous scripted auto trader I was told when I asked my upline. What does that even mean?
The first sign of trouble with bitcoin was a week ago. The claim was because of the blockchain backlog, Gladiacoin was going to pause trading for 5 days. There were some people grumbling but most were passing this off as Gladiacoin was a responsible company. Trading started again then it was announced over the following weekend that they were implementing a monthly 15% admin fee. The implementation was horrible. Instead of deducting the 15% off of future returns they locked your account and stopped any trading until you paid what people started calling a ransom fee. In order to get access to your investment again you need to pay up. This went on all this past week and yesterday Gladiacoin stopped trading again due to people not paying the admin fee. Trading has paused until next week now and my opinion will not start again.
What do I make out of all this? Well I'm fortunate that I got in when I did. One bitcoin cost $1100 US dollars. At roughly $2500 US dollars I've made my money back and then some. The key thing in investing in Gladiacoin is that I did so with money I was willing and able to lose.
I've also learned a lot. This introduced me into cryptocurrencies. I've seen the challenges of acquiring bitcoin. I've opened up accounts on some exchanges and have made money trading ripple, litecoin reddcoin and a few others. I've stumbled upon Steemit which has proven to be a source of great learning. For example I learned about xcoins where I can go and sell bitcoin for a profit. Overall I have Gladiacoin to thank for all this, even though it is a ponzi scheme.
The terrible thing is all the time spent worrying when you encounter such things. I got framed by a Facebook scam some months ago and had to close my credit card. All the time I spent on getting a new one wasted.
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