Bitcoin Penny Auction identify Ton van Houten as founder and CEO of the company.

This matches up with the Bitcoin Penny Auction website domain (“bitcoinpennyauction.com”) registration, which lists van Houten as the owner.

Van Houten is based out of Gouda in the Netherlands. As per his Bitcoin Penny Auction corporate bio;

Through the years he has developed himself into a specialist regarding Internet and has followed several courses, which led to his extensive online experience.

In the past Ton has held several positions, among as a director for a Dutch based search engine.

Possibly due to language barriers, I was unable to put together an MLM history on van Houten.

Read on for a full review of the Bitcoin Penny Auction MLM opportunity.

Bitcoin Penny Auction Products

Bitcoin Penny Auction has no retailable products or services, with affiliates only able to market Bitcoin Penny Auction itself.

Once signed up, Bitcoin Penny Auction affiliates are given access to a penny auction platform.

The Bitcoin Penny Auction Compensation Plan

The Bitcoin Penny Auction compensation plan pays affiliates when recruited affiliates purchase auction bid packs.

  • Start Pack – $5.50 (10 bids)
  • Small Pack – $11 (21 bids)
  • Basic Pack – $26.95 (53 bids)
  • Bronze Pack – $66.69 (131 bids)
  • Silver Pack – $132 (263 bids)
  • Gold Pack – $261.25 (525 bids)
  • Platinum Pack – $508.75 (1050 bids)
  • Diamond Pack – $1237.50 (2625 bids)

Commissions on bid pack purchases are paid out via a unilevel compensation structure.

A unilevel compensation structure places an affiliate at the top of a unilevel team, with every personally recruited affiliate placed directly under them (level 1):

If any level 1 affiliates recruit new affiliates, they are placed on level 2 of the original affiliate’s unilevel team.

If any level 2 affiliates recruit new affiliates, they are placed on level 3 and so on and so forth down a theoretical infinite number of levels.

Base rate commissions are capped at four unilevel levels as follows:

  • level 1 (personally recruited affiliates) – 2%
  • level 2 – 1.5%
  • level 3 – 1%
  • level 4 – 0.5%

A Bitcoin Penny Auction affiliate can increase their level 1 commission rate by spending more money on bid packs:

  • Bronze Pack ($66.69) – 3%
  • Silver Pack ($132) – 4%
  • Gold Pack ($261.25) – 5%
  • Platinum Pack ($508.75) – 7.5%
  • Diamond Pack ($1237.50) – 10%

Joining Bitcoin Penny Auction

Bitcoin Penny Auction affiliate membership is free.

Note however that the purchase of bid packs however do increase the base commission rate offered.

This ranges from $66.69 (3%) to $1237.50 (10%).

Conclusion

The problem with Bitcoin Penny Auction is that the company markets bitcoin itself as a product.

It’s never done well before, combining a product, the Bitcoin, with a Penny Auction and unique guarantees.

Bitcoin is a currency and can’t be used as a product in MLM, any more so than you could trade the dollar or Euro.

Legal trading of currencies has to be done in a regulated environment, which Bitcoin Penny Auction’s platform is anything but.

Personally I’ve always seen penny auctions as an unsustainable business model. You lure people in with the promise of cheap stuff, when in reality only a minute percentage of your bidders actually get cheap stuff.

The rest lose money to subsidize the cheap cost of goods for a tiny minority of bidders.

Overtime people lose interest and without a fresh supply of new suckers, the business wanes.

In an attempt to address this, Bitcoin Penny Auction offer a bidding and cashback guarantee.

The bidding guarantee returns used bids to a bidder on the proviso they purchase the bitcoin they were bidding on at the current public exchange rate.

Outside of otherwise losing money by way of used bids, I don’t know why anyone would do this.

Furthermore how Bitcoin Penny Auction plan to supply affiliates with bitcoin indefinitely is a mystery.

It’s no secret that the value of bitcoin is volatile. A guarantee implies Bitcoin Penny Auction has a company-wide reserve it can sell bitcoin to at any given time.

If the value goes up though, how is that sustainable.

I suppose an alternative would just be for the company to buy and sell at the current rate as required, however the exchange fees would then have to be worn by the company – again not sustainable (unless they were betting on overall losses in bids covering exchange fees).

The cashback guarantee will return bid pack funds to an affiliate if the following conditions are met:

  • purchase at least 10 bid packages within a calendar month (start and small packs are excluded)
  • no auction has been won in that calendar month
  • the purchased bid credits must be all used
  • the buy now option has not been used
  • the request must be received by us within 10 working days after the end of the calendar month
  • use the contact form on our website and we do the rest

This is a minimum outlay of $269.50. To met it seems like a probability game, otherwise how could Bitcoin Penny Auction cover widespread losses that are typical of penny auctions?

The more affiliates there are the more bids are being placed. If someone spent thousands and had nothing to show for it, Bitcoin Penny Auction can’t just conjure up the money to pay them back each month.

The nature of a penny auction, especially when money is the auction prize, is akin to gambling.

Bitcoin Penny Auction are aware of this, and so include the following in their company FAQ:

Is it gambling?

It appears by the definition of the law that no, penny auctions are not gambling. It is a game that has elements of skill, risk and luck.

I don’t know what “definition” Bitcoin Penny Auction are relying on, but I can tell you if it wasn’t gambling then there’d be no need to limit auction wins at 2 a day or 8 in a week.

Oh and I’m pretty sure poker has “elements of skill, risk and luck” too. Still gambling but.

Any way you cut it, using money for a chance to win more money is the very definition of gambling.

Granted this is all in bitcoin, which Bitcoin Penny Auction are obviously hoping remains unregulated – but that doesn’t mean local gaming laws in your area should be ignored.

With respect to the compensation plan, with no retail Bitcoin Penny Auction is operating as a product-based pyramid scheme.

Affiliates are the only ones able to purchase bids, which ties them to recruitment via the unilevel.

As with all such schemes, once affiliate recruitment dies so too will commissions paid out.

Auction bid guarantee or not, when an MLM pyramid collapses the majority of affiliates lose money.