Octoin -- don't waste your money!

SYMBOL: OCC (may also be listed as OCN)
VALUE AT PRESS TIME: US$70 (based on a Bitcoin value of $11,000)
MAIN PURPOSE: investing and trading
TRADING ON: Exrates.me, YoBit.net, Majix.exchange (beware!) and its internal exchange

Stay away from this lending/mining scheme!!

Thanks to the wonderful algorithm of YouTube, videos about Octoin Coin keep popping up in my YT suggestions. Since many of the YouTubers pushing Octoin Coin (OCC) also encouraged people to invest in Bitconnect, I decided I should look into Octoin.

Avoid it. Really. Stay away.

Like Bitconnect, Octoin wraps itself in cryptocurrency clothes while promising the same kind of "guaranteed daily income" that innumerable pyramid and Ponzi schemes have promised for decades. In Octoin's case, it promises daily returns from mining contracts, a lending program, and (naturally) referral bonuses. Like Bitconnect, it has its own internal exchange, and has managed to persuade at least one external exchange, Yobit.net, to trade OCC against Bitcoin (BTC).

Need I remind you what happened to Bitconnect just last week?

Octoin for now seems to have the most popularity in Asia, especially Indonesia, and Africa, especially Nigeria, but apparently wants to expand into China and the USA.

Why do I suspect Octoin to be shady?

• No whitepaper. More legitimate cryptocurrency projects have detailed documents (whitepapers) describing their mission, goals, technology, and developers. Like Bitconnect and Davorcoin, both of which I have reviewed here, Octoin only says it uses the Scrypt mining algorithm and Proof of Stake on its blockchain, like dozens of other projects.
• Limited exchange access. A cryptocurrency with wide appeal would probably be traded on multiple, well known exchanges, like Bittrex, Bitfinex, or OKEX. Multiple listings provides investors with liquidity. But so far, OCC (which was launched this month) is only traded on minor exchanges, Yobit.net, Exrates.me and an even smaller Nigerian-based exchange, Majix.exchange, which looks even more suspicious than Octoin. When Bitconnect died last week, it also closed its exchange services, so desperate users could only resort to the few external exchanges trading in BCC.
• Daily returns averaging 1% from mining on their equipment or lending OCC (and presumably more from referral bonuses). There are no photos of their mining equipment, which is supposedly in "northwestern China," and other returns seem to be based on generalities like "INVESTMENTS IN ICO AND CRYPTOCURRENCY TRADING" and a seven-level partnership program.
• No identifiable team members, other than one officer in the UK. The "Team" webpage lists people like Roger Schmidt, CEO of Google, Peter Thiel, one of the founders of PayPal, former US Vice President Al Gore, and former US Senator Ron Pal (sic), among others. Obviously none of these bigwigs would be associated with Octoin.
• A largely self-contained "community" solely trading OCC among themselves, following the Bitconnect model. With Bitconnect, you sent them Bitcoin and got Bitconnect Coins in return, which you could then stake (hold in reserve to earn returns in BCC), lend to a mysterious trading bot (after being converted into US dollars), or trade. Until Bitconnect folded, it was possible to withdraw Bitcoin from the platform, but that ended Jan. 16. Now investors only have stashes of BCC tokens worth a fraction of their original value.
• Lofty promises of world-changing effeects. While it is true most cryptocurrency projects promise investors the moon, they usually limit those promises to a specific goal. Octoin promises users everything:

Mission

Cryptocurrency is rapidly conquering the world. This is an alternative to all the classic ways of financial relationships.
Our mission is to make the cryptocurrency easy and affordable, so that everyone could freely enjoy all the benefits of cryptocurrency, regardless of their social status, skills, knowledge and capital.

We believe that if the appearance of the Internet has erased all boundaries, then crypto currencies can make everyone secure!
We can provide all the tools: multicurrency wallets with a full set of functions to keep and transfer funds both inside the wallet and using the external transactions; investments in mining, investments in trade, seven-level partner program, P2P-exchange, and possibility of opening a regional office. The choice is up to you!

Team
The Octoin team is professional, balanced and time-tested. Each member supplements and strengthens other's possibilities: Analytical Department provides us with accurate forecasts, operating with the latest data, traders make advantageous transactions based on their reports, the miners increase their computing capacities by means of successful trade.Each member of our team is an expert in his or her business.

Octoin cooperates with large funds and market leaders, which have a significant influence on the current rates of cryptocurrency. Their support and access to insider information allows our company to minimize risks in all areas of activity.

Octoin claims to have nine divisions in its operation, quite remarkable considering it has only one known director, Matt Blunt, living (presumably) in the UK. Busy fellow. He is listed on Octoin Limited's UK business registration form (PDF).

Its corporate address is listed on its registration form as 90 Long Acre in London, which is in fact a real office building near Covent Garden. However, I could find no other listing online for Octoin Limited, other than at business information sites like bizstats.co.uk.

Mr Blunt is apparently 42 and a UK national. Super!

Considering that bizstats.co.uk also lists numerous other firms located 0.00 miles from Octoin Limited, we can assume each is a one-room office (or post office box) at 90 Long Acre. In other words, Octoin cannot have nine different divisions located at 90 Long Acre, London.

Since I am reluctant to register with Octoin in order to see more details about their purported returns, I went looking for other sources of information. One site posted this analysis of the monthly and daily returns:

My take on Octoin is that there are two primary ways in which an investor can make money with the company. These are by means of its “Trading” activities and by means of its “Mining” activities. As I indicated above, you can choose whether you would like to invest for a 30, 60, 90, 120, or 150-day long trading period. The daily interest you will receive for any length of plan will be in the neighborhood of 1%. However, it varies from day to day. The website does give you the interest that each of these subplans made in the past 30 days, so you can get an idea as to how profitable an investment might be. For example, right now, it indicates that the 30-day plan earned 29.11% in the last 30 days. This also means that, in 30 days, if, for example, I invested $100 in the 30-day plan, I would earn $29.11 in profit. If you divide 29.11 by 30 (and multiply by 100), you get the average percent earnings per day which is 0.97%. Since your principal is returned to you at the end of the plan, this is your DNI or daily net interest.

The multilevel marketing (MLM) aspect of Octoin seems to be its "partnership" program, in which an investor earns returns on the contributions from his downline.

Bitconnect also had a seven-level referral pyramid, with 7% as the top bonus. But late last year, it quietly scaled that aggressive program down to three levels peaking at 5%. And now it has no levels peaking at zero percent. Just sayin'.

I could go into even more detail analyzing Octoin, which I may yet do. But I have seen enough to know that Octoin is only going to make its operators and top promoters insanely rich by sucking money away from thousands of naive and desperate investors cheerfully emptying their wallets into the program's coffers. The subReddit r/BCC is filling up with sad stories by people who were hoodwinked into handing over their life savings to Bitconnect, sure that the platform was going to make them all millionaires.

Octoin will disappoint its believers, too.

If you have invested money in Octoin, I hope you have not wagered more than you can afford to lose. If you have questions or comments, please leave them below. And as always, upvote and resteem if you are so moved.

[This article is cross-posted at my blog.]