Coins of Change provide no information on their website about who owns or runs the business.

The Coins of Change website domain (“coinsofchange.org”) was privately registered on July 20th, 2017.

Of note is the Coins of Change website domain uses the name-servers of “bitcoinsetupsite.com”.

If you visit that site you’ll see it’s a clone of the Coins of Change website.

The owner of the Bitcoin Setup Site is Mike Hollen, through an address in the US state of Iowa.

The registration details of the email address domain Hollen used to register the Bitcoin Setup Site suggest he works for “Pronto Web Services”, who seem to be a shell company registered in Panama.

The email address Hollen used to register this domain also suggests he works for IsoMedia. On their website IsoMedia provide web hosting services.

To what extent Hollen is involved with Coins of Change beyond website development is unclear.

The official Coins of Change Facebook group meanwhile lists three admins; Edmond Lee, Jorge Raziel and Domingo M. Silvas.

It is highly likely that one or more of the individuals are running Coins of Change.

As always, if an MLM company is not openly upfront about who is running or owns it, think long and hard about joining and/or handing over any money.

Coins of Change Products

Coins of Change has no retailable products or services, with affiliates only able to market Coins of Change affiliate membership itself.

Coins of Change affiliate membership provides access to a “bitcoin e-book and video course” and “Facebook e-commerce course”.

The Coins of Change Compensation Plan

Coins of Change affiliates gift funds to each other via a two-tier 3×5 matrix cycler.

A 3×5 matrix places a Coins of Change affiliate at the top of a matrix, with three positions directly under them:

These three positions form the first level of the matrix. The second level of the matrix is generated by splitting these first three positions into another three positions each (9 positions).

Levels three to five of the matrix are generated in the same manner, with each new level housing three times as many positions as the previous level.

A Coins of Change affiliate signs up and gifts $50 to an existing affiliate.

This payment in turn qualifies the affiliate to receive $50 gifting payments from subsequently recruited Coins of Change affiliates.

Levels 2 to 5 of the matrix operate in the same manner, with the amounts gifted at each level increasing.

Gifting payment across all XX of the Coins of Change 3×5 matrix are as follows:

  • level 1 – gift $50 and receive $40 from three affiliates
  • level 2 – gift $80 and receive $70 from nine affiliates
  • level 3 – gift $280 and receive $250 from twenty-seven affiliates
  • level 4 – gift $1000 and receive $900 from eighty-one affiliates
  • level 5 – gift $5400 and receive $4900 from two hundred and forty-three affiliates

The second-tier matrix is referred to as the “Gold Stage”.

It operates in the same manner as the first-tier, however this time around payments are tracked in bitcoin (tier 1 operates in bitcoin too but set at USD amounts).

  • level 1 – gift 0.1 BTC and receive 0.09 BTC from three affiliates
  • level 2 – gift 0.2 BTC and receive 0.18 BTC from nine affiliates
  • level 3 – gift 1 BTC and receive 0.9 BTC from twenty-seven affiliates
  • level 4 – gift 3 BTC and receive 2.5 BTC from eighty-one affiliates
  • level 5 – gift 6 BTC and receive 5 BTC from two hundred and forty-three affiliates

If you’ve noticed the discrepancy between the amounts gifted in and received, Coins of Change explain that the missing funds go into a Bonus Pool.

Specifics of the Bonus Pool are not provided, however it appears to be a slush fund to reward the company’s top recruiters.

Joining Coins of Change

Coins of Change affiliate membership is tied to a $50 gifting payment.

Full participation in the Coins of Change MLM opportunity costs $6810 and 10.3 BTC in gifting payments.

Note that all gifting payments within Coins of Change (both paid and received) are made in bitcoin. This includes quoted USD amounts.

Conclusion

Under the pretense of “peer-to-peer crowd-funding”, Coins of Change operates as a cash gifting scheme.

New affiliates sign up and gift funds to existing Coins of Change affiliates.

They in turn receive gifting payments from affiliates recruited after them, with how much is gifted increasing over time.

Matrix-based gifting schemes like Coins of Change primarily benefit the admins running them.

When setting up a matrix-based gifting scheme, the admin or admins set up pre-loaded positions.

These positions sit at the top of the company-wide matrix and fill to the highest levels first.

With more and more money passed up at each matrix level, pre-loaded admin positions typically receive the lion’s share of gifted funds.

A few early adopters make a bit of money, however once recruitment stops so too do funds gifted in at the bottom of the company matrix.

This inevitable decline in recruitment eventually triggers a collapse, at which point the majority of Coins of Change affiliates will lose money.