Whatever hopes OneCoin affiliates had of getting their money out of the scheme have been dashed, after it was announced the xCoinx internal exchange will remain closed.

The news was broken to OneCoin affiliates over the weekend, tacked onto the end of a video message by Founder Ruja Ignatova.

For months OneCoin have been denying all but a tiny percentage of withdrawal requests made through xCoinx. xCoinx is an internal exchange operated by OneCoin and is the only way for affiliates to cash their OneCoin points out.

A few weeks back OneCoin shut down xCoinx, in anticipation of an announcement on January 13th.

As per a message quietly flashed up on-screen after Ignatova’s video,

xCoinx will be closed to prepare for the IPO.

Until then you all can exchange your coins for OFC – or spend coins on your newly launched e-commerce platform.

The IPO ruse is straight out of the OPN playbook. OneCoin purchased the OPN affiliate-base back in January of 2016. The deal also saw several OPN executives given cushy leadership positions within OneCoin.

OPN, otherwise known as The Opportunity Network, was a failed reincarnation of the Unaico/SiteTalk virtual shares scam.

Not unlike OneCoin’s OFC offering, which are virtual shares in the company’s yet to take place IPO.

In an attempt to provide some value to the virtual shares it had been schlepping onto affiliates, OPN tried to list itself on the GXG Markets stock exchange through the shell company “ST Communities”.

OPN however failed to pass GXG Markets’ “screening process” and the listing was terminated.

The backup plan saw OPN list itself on the Cyprus stock exchange via “Global Digital Services PLC”, another shell company.

OPN IPO shares were converted to actual shares in Global Digital Services. Not surprisingly, after the listing the share price plummeted.

Global Digital Services is still traded on the exchange, with a share price 2.6 cents as of December, 2016.

Why am I bringing all of this up?

Well there’s a good chance OneCoin is going to follow suit. Frank Ricketts, the man who orchestrated the OPN bogus IPO, has been appearing on stage at OneCoin events since the OPN acquisition.

Expect OneCoin to announce it’s IPO via a backwater stock exchange and shell company you’ve never heard of soon.

In their current state, OneCoin points present a dilemma for OneLife as a company. The represented internal value is currently 7.9 EUR a point, only OneCoin doesn’t have enough money to honor the millions of coins it’s created and sold off to affiliates.

The OFC offering is an attempt to convert OneCoin point liabilities into virtual shares, the value of which will plummet once the IPO takes place.

Basically it’s just a different way for affiliates to lose money through. OneCoin will claim they can’t control the public share price, and that’ll be that.

Oh and despite quite clearly offering securities to their affiliates, OneCoin have of course failed to provide any indication that they’ve registered themselves with a securities regulator in any jurisdiction.

So we can now add securities fraud to list of financial crimes OneCoin have thus far engaged in.

The other major announcement made in Sweden over the weekend pertains to OneCoin’s merchant network.

Last year the number of merchants that were purportedly “signed up and ready to go” climbed to 500,000. In May OneCoin was supposed to reveal its pre-populated merchant platform but that never happened.

Late last year the company released a merchant app, which since appears to have been quietly abandoned.

Now affiliates have been told they’ll need to source merchants themselves for OneCoin’s upcoming “Deal Shaker” platform.

Merchants using the Deal Shaker platform have to take payment of at least 50% in OneCoins, with OneLife taking a 50% cut of whatever the real money percentage is.

That not a typo. OneCoin is going to charge affiliates a 50% fiat currency fee for using their DealShaker platform.

What’s curious is that up until recently OneCoin support were telling affiliates merchants wouldn’t be able to accept OneCoin as payment until the coin goes public.

Ruja Ignatova has previously stated that won’t happen until the second quarter of 2018. That plan seems to have now gone out the window.

Meanwhile how merchants will actually use OneCoin is unclear. A legitimate third-party business (not run by a OneCoin affiliate at a loss) needs to conduct business in actual money.

With xCoinx down even merchants can’t exchange OneCoin for money. So why would a legitimate merchant accept OneCoin?

You can’t run a business on Ponzi points, even if you’re only taking in the minimum 50% of revenue in OneCoins as required.

With the merchant platform unlikely to take off (beyond a few token businesses owned by affiliates), that leaves affiliates with OCF virtual shares, an IPO who knows where and coins they can’t liquidate.

Once Nigeria stops pumping money into OneCoin, what then?