Nigerian SEC warns against OneCoin, SwissCoin pyramid schemes
In a public notice published yesterday, the Nigerian SEC has issued a warning against cryptocurrencies and pyramid schemes.
OneCoin, SwissCoin and Bitcoin are specifically singled out, with the SEC extending the warning to “such other virtual or digital currencies”.
The attention of the Securities and Exchange Commission, (the Commission) has been drawn to radio advertisements and other modes of solicitations of the public to invest in cryptocurrencies such as Swisscoin, OneCoin, Bitcoin and such other virtual or digital currencies.
The public is hereby advised to exercise extreme caution with regard to digital (crypto currencies) as a vehicle of investments.
The Commission, wishes to alert the public that none of the persons, companies or entities promoting cryptocurrencies has been recognized or authorized by it or by other regulatory agencies in Nigeria to receive deposits from the public or to provide any investment or other financial services in or from Nigeria.
The public should also be aware that any investment opportunities promoted by these persons, companies or entities are likely to be of a risky nature with a high risk of loss of money, whilst others may be outright fraudulent pyramid schemes.
Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency but there is no business opportunity attached to it. Therefore it’s clear the Nigerian SEC is referring to OneCoin and SwissCoin in its pyramid scheme warning.
Why is simple enough.
Both OneCoin and SwissCoin solicit investment from affiliates, with commissions paid upon recruitment of new affiliates.
A Ponzi layer also exists in both schemes, by way of points (tokens) converted to Ponzi points and then cashed out by affiliates. Both OneCoin and SwissCoin use newly invested funds to pay affiliates who cash points out through an internal exchange.
The value of the points is arbitrarily increased by the companies over time, creating an increased ROI liability the longer the schemes run.
Given that these instruments and the persons, companies or entities that promote them have neither been authorized, nor any guidelines/regulations developed for them by any of the regulatory authorities in Nigeria, there is no protection available to users or investors in these virtual currencies from financial losses if the virtual currencies fail or the companies promoting them go out of business.
Neither OneCoin or SwissCoin’s Ponzi points can be used for anything meaningful outside of the attached business opportunities. This separates them from legitimate cryptocurrencies like bitcoin.
Both OneCoin and SwissCoin are marketed as investment opportunities in Nigeria.
A website titled “OneCoin Nigeria” (“onecoin.com.ng”) markets the OneCoin OneLife business opportunity as follows:
The current value of OneCoin is €6.95. It started as €0.50 in January 2015. It is expected to reach €10 – €15 per coin by December 2016.
On the average, it costs about €140 to own at least 30 coins which is currently worth €198. In a few weeks those 30 coins will be worth about €450.
Think about it, if you then invest €5530, you would be getting about 3000 coins. At the current value of onecoin that makes your investment worth over €20,000.
The current internal value of OneCoin is €7.89 EUR.
A website titled “SwissCoin Nigeria” (“swisscoin.com.ng”) markets the SwissCoin opportunity in a similar manner:
In the pack you purchase you will also receive “tokens” that are used to generate Swisscoin in the mining system, you will receive 1 token for 0.1 euro.
This means that if you Invest 500 euro, you will get 5000 tokens. You will also receive split(s) in your packs (a split will double up your tokens) giving you a total of 10.000 tokens.
The split is a bonus from company that occurs every 5-8 weeks, split indicator now is at 89% (as of the day of publishing this content) and we are awaiting the first ever split in Swisscoin History.
This is just a bonus from the company, doubling our investment. Great isn’t it?
The internal value of SwissCoin still appears to be €0.1 EUR.
At the time of publication Alexa estimate Nigeria is the largest source of traffic to the OneCoin, OneLife and SwissCoin websites.
Thanks Julla murobbs for the clip during the day from Gothenburg.Well, fastest growing company…
More to follow later.
murobbs.muropaketti.com/threads/onecoin-uusi-pyramidihuijaus-krp-rikosta-voidaan-arvioida-luotettavasti-vasta-myoehemmin.1197240/page-566
So the big news was the merchant platform, which will be online on monday 16th.
Seller has to accept minimum 50% as onecoins. Ruja also takes 25% fee of the real money part. lol..
Ruja’s announcement can be seen here already:
nolink://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8PiT-rA-_eA
A 25% fee?
Pay us to accept our Ponzi points!
Lol indeed.
And is it just me or is the auditorium practically empty?
Which part of ‘may be’ don’t you understand?
Stop scare mongering you loser! Pure bias and lousy journalism.
OneCoin’s business model clearly demonstrates it’s a pyramid scheme.
The “maybe” probably refers to “outright”, which is correct as OneCoin do everything they can to mask financial fraud taking place.
@Jamil Khan
Here is a single source document summarizing and sourcing the “why” you may be seeking:
nawadir.org/2016/12/01/is-onecoin-permissible/
Now, are you going to throw a blanket over the independent 3rd party group of Muslim clerics and scholars who put together this 17page Research Paper and say that they too are “biased” and “lousy” investigators? Or, will you stop supporting fraud and warn others the same?
We’ll be holding our breathes awaiting your answer.
She’s playing high stakes poker. I never believed that they would become so shameless.
It’s gonna be quite difficult to handle percentage, if fractions are not possible. My guess is that the other announcement will be related to this.
One Funny thing is, Ruja said reps get BV from the real money part of the merchant sells (merchants which they bring in). So it is clearly favorable that merchants use 50% real money for both the companty and the reps.
Not surprising considering OneCoin has no real market defined value and it is very difficult to sell.
I really cannot imagine that this will get popular. Bigger merchants want real money, or currency which can be sold fast, and OneCoin is not that. For smaller merchants there are much more cheaper and reliable solutions to sell their products than this.
Ruja Ignatova announces the preparation of the IPO (Initial Public Offering) on a stock exchange in Asia, on Facebook @OneCoinOfficialPage:
facebook.com/OneCoinOfficialPage/posts/978634592270649
Everybody can exchange his Onecoins for OFCs. An OFC is a future certificate that entitles you to receive shares in the company Onecoin which will be listed on the stock exchange.
In January/February you will get DOUBLE OFCs!
The final screenshot shows this:
Screenshot: i.imgur.com/stvTcjH.jpg
So it looks like even the very limited opportunities to sell coins via the exchange are switched off.
Another video from Ruja today:
Plans of OneCoin for 2017 and 2018
As rumored Ruja says they want to list the company in stock exchange in Asia. “Everybody who owns coins will become a shareholder”.
nolink://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vAm18wjRvM
When you convert your coins to OFC in February, you will get DOUBLE the OFCs. Convert your coins now! LMAO…
It seems XcoinX will not open any time soon.. In the end of that video there’s a message:
Seem’s quite clever to me. I can’t imagine there are any merchants who care about onecoin outside the existing faithful. By setting the fee in that way you encourage them to keep their cash part down to a minimum to prevent too much going in fees.
Fees for a credit card might be 3%ish, so to be competitive with that, cash would need to be only 12% of the transaction (25% of that =2%).
Of course most sane merchants would just say I’ll just take credit card it’s easier and cheaper. (For reference worldpay online.worldpay.com/pricing charge 2.75% per transaction)
Ruja says “We are a Financial technology company, also known as Finance in her Video”.
but wait a moment… They are blacklisted by all Banks/Visa/Mastercard and Merchant providers???
And.. All real crypto’s have a ‘Proof of stake’ on their Blockchain listed in the exchange.
Without this certificate it’s just a numbers on the screen game – check alexa.com their website is loosing momentum already…
Heh, I’m sure members are very happy, that they can’t even try to sell their coins cause XcoinX remains closed. But hey, they can now get DOUBLE OFCs in February with their coins, so that’s incredible!
Whoop whoop!!! 😀
I had never heard of an OFC before with respect to stocks.
I looked it up online and the only thing I can find is an “Option for Future Certifcate” that was utilized by Unaico.
Unaico is a Ponzi/pyramid scheme Sebastian Greenwood pushed. It seems to be a modified stock option, where instead of having a future purchase of stock at a price established today when the stock exists, they are selling stock today that doesn’t exist.
A summary of the news:
Dealshakers.com merchant place:
– DealShakers will start taking deal offers tomorrow. But according to Ruja, members can start using OneCoins after a month February 16th.
– The seller has to accept at least 50% of the value as onecoins
– Ruja takes 25% fee from the real money part
– If a rep can pimp a merchant to join, the rep can get BV (and bonus) from the real money part of the pimped merchant sales
Ruja’s future talk:
– Still plans to make OneCoin public second half of 2018
– Ruja wants to take OneLife to some Asian stock exchange (interesting to see if possible even in Asia)
– Ruja persuades members to exchange their coins to OFCs which can be used to acquire shares.
– In February there’s a promotion where you can get double the OFCs with your coins (whoop whoop)
– XcoinX remains closed for undisclosed amount of time. Interesting to see member reactions to this news, who are hoping to finally get some money out of their investment.
– Selling coins remains impossible. No serious merchant will touch with a 5 foot stick this kind of circus.
SMH. It’s like they aren’t even trying anymore.
I’m sure legit merchants will be lining up to take an extra 25% loss by having to accept 50% of their dealshaker deals in OC.
Naturally, all of the heavy lifting is dumped on the “educated miners”…. or should we call them advertising sales reps now?? As Ruja states:
And when every one of you OneCoin faithful fail to become successful advertising salespeople, the collapse is all your fault.
I’m sure this is exactly why you spent up to 200+ thousand Euro on a cryptocurrency “education”.
Maybe we can look forward to advertising sales training packages for sale soon. With bonus tokens attached of course.
Interesting quote from Pablo:
so that means it’s currently a $2.5bn company according to the CEO himself!
With 9,438,880,000 coins “mined”, a $2.5bn valuation means the coins are only “worth” $0.26 according to OneLi(f)e/OneCo(i)n themselves!
What a bunch of crooks!
Pablo did not refer to the OneCoin Market Capitalization, but to the yearly turnover/sales.
OK, but why not mention the market capitalisation of the coin? €74bn is far more “impressive” than a turnover of $2.5bn.
Could it be that he realises how ridiculous it sounds (especially with no-one able to sell their coins)? or the coins are in actual fact totally worthless?
I think indeed that Pablo is smart enough to understand that the market cap figures are absurd.
There’s a good story on the internet about an onecoin affiliate being kidnapped in India because investors were fed up with not getting paid promised ROI’s.
One of the stories can be found on millenniumpost.in website.
Says police finally rescued the affiliate but further investigation showed he was not an “innocent man” and talks about the Ponzi scheme we all know onecoin to be.
I Love it!
Injunction issued against Swisscoin:
mlm-worldwide.de/swisscoin-per-einstweiliger-verfuegung-verboten?utm_content=bufferdd144&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer
If it is a Scam, and i think it is too, why does it still exist?? Why do authorities not close it down??
How are Nigerian authorities going to shut down a bitcoin Ponzi scheme run from Russia? (or the Philippines now through that Chuddy guy)
The best they can do is round up local promoters and file charges. The trend unfortunately is for regulators to hear “bitcoin” and throw their hands up in despair (“not our department!”).