Bitonite fails to provide ownership or executive information on its website.

Bitonite’s website domain (“bitonite.com”), was privately registered with a redacted Austrian address on January 19th, 2023.

Further research reveals Bitonite marketing material citing three co-founders:

  • Tanyel Tahtaci – CMO
  • Mertkan Boyraz – CEO
  • Denis Muric – CSO

Other than he’s a crypto bro from Turkey, I wasn’t able to put together an MLM history for Tanyel Tahtaci. Same story with Mertkan Boyraz, originally from Austria.

Denis Muric is a crypto bro from Germany.

Prior to co-founding Bitonite, Muric was promoting the MarketPeak Ponzi scheme.

At some point all three Bitonite co-founders have left their native countries for Dubai.

Bitonite provides a shell company corporate address in the Marshall Islands on its website. With all three co-founders based out of Dubai though, it’s obvious the UAE is where Bitonite is being run from.

Bitonite having ties to Dubai is an automatic red flag, owing to Dubai being the MLM crime capital of the world.

BehindMLM’s guidelines for Dubai are:

  1. If someone lives in Dubai and approaches you about an MLM opportunity, they’re trying to scam you.
  2. If an MLM company is based out of or represents it has ties to Dubai, it’s a scam.

If you want to know specifically how this applies to Bitonite, read on for a full review.

Bitonite’s Products

Bitonite has no retailable products or services.

Affiliates are only able to market Bitonite affiliate membership itself.

Bitonite’s Compensation Plan

Bitonite solicits investment in USD equivalents of bitcoin. This is done on the promise of a passive return.

Bitonite also offers a forex investment scheme, through which it solicits between $100,000 to $300,000 in investment.

Advertised returns on Bitonite’s forex offering are 3% to 10% a month.

The MLM side of Bitonite pays on investment and returns paid to recruited affiliates.

Bitonite Affiliate Ranks

There are twelve ranks within Bitonite’s compensation plan.

Along with their respective qualification criteria, they are as follows:

  1. Bronze – generate $5000 in downline investment volume ($250 must come from personally recruited affiliates)
  2. Silver – generate $25,000 in downline investment volume ($500 must come from personally recruited affiliates)
  3. Gold – generate $50,000 in downline investment volume ($2000 must come from personally recruited affiliates)
  4. Platinum – generate $100,000 in downline investment volume ($3000 must come from personally recruited affiliates)
  5. Emerald – generate $250,000 in downline investment volume ($6000 must come from personally recruited affiliates)
  6. Diamond – generate $500,000 in downline investment volume ($15,000 must come from personally recruited affiliates)
  7. Executive – generate $1,000,000 in downline investment volume ($25,000 must come from personally recruited affiliates)
  8. Icon – generate $2,500,000 in downline investment volume ($75,000 must come from personally recruited affiliates)
  9. Ambassador – generate $5,000,000 in downline investment volume ($150,000 must come from personally recruited affiliates)
  10. Crown – generate $10,000,000 in downline investment volume ($250,000 must come from personally recruited affiliates)
  11. Legend – generate $25,000,000 in downline investment volume ($750,000 must come from personally recruited affiliates)
  12. President – generate $50,000,000 in downline investment volume ($1,500,000 must come from personally recruited affiliates)

Residual Commissions

Bitonite pays residual commissions 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.

Bitonite caps payable unilevel team levels at eight.

Residual commissions are paid as a percentage of passive returns paid to affiliates across these eight levels as follows:

  • level 1 (personally recruited affiliates) – 4.75%
  • level 2 – 3%
  • level 3 – 2.75%
  • level 4 – 2.25%
  • level 5 – 1.75%
  • level 6 – 1.5%
  • level 7 – 1.25%
  • level 8 – 0.75%

Note that Bitonite affiliates must qualify for payments across levels 3 to 8:

  • qualifying for level 3 residual commissions requires a personal $500 investment
  • qualifying for level 4 residual commissions requires a personal $1000 investment
  • qualifying for level 5 residual commissions requires a personal $2500 investment
  • qualifying for level 6 residual commissions requires a personal $4000 investment
  • qualifying for level 7 residual commissions requires a personal $6000 investment
  • qualifying for level 8 residual commissions requires a personal $8000 investment

Trading Fee Commissions

Bitonite collects a fee when bitcoin is invested into its trading scheme.

A commission on this fee (up to 12.5%) is paid down three levels of recruitment:

  • level 1 – 25%
  • level 2 – 15%
  • level 3 – 10%

Education Package Commissions

Bitonite sells “education packages”. Pricing isn’t provided in their marketing materials but we do know they pay commissions on education package purchases down three levels of recruitment:

  • level 1 – 20%
  • level 2 – 15%
  • level 3 – 10%
  • level 4 – 5%

Forex Investment Commissions

Bitonite pays a commission on funds invested into its forex scheme.

  • recruit an affiliate who invests $100,000 and receive $400
  • recruit an affiliate who invests $200,000 and receive $800
  • recruit an affiliate who invests $300,000 and receive $1120

Additional residual commissions are paid across “phases” of the forex scheme.

Rank Achivement Bonus

Bitonite rewards affiliates for qualifying at Bronze and higher with the following one-time Rank Achievement Bonuses:

  • qualify at Bronze and receive $50
  • qualify at Silver and receive $250
  • qualify at Gold and receive $500
  • qualify at Platinum and receive $1000
  • qualify at Emerald and receive $2500
  • qualify at Diamond and receive $5000
  • qualify at Executive and receive $10,000
  • qualify at Icon and receive $25,000
  • qualify at Ambassador and receive $50,000
  • qualify at Crown and receive $100,000
  • qualify at Legend and receive $250,000
  • qualify at President and receive $500,000

Joining Bitonite

Bitonite affiliate membership is free.

Full participation in the attached income opportunity requires an investment in bitcoin.

Bitonite charges a fee on invested bitcoin, determined by how much is invested:

  • invest up to $999 and pay a 12.5% fee
  • invest $1000 to $4999 and pay a 10% fee
  • invest $5000 to $9,999 and pay a 7.5% fee
  • invest $10,000 to $24,999 and pay a 5% fee
  • invest $25,000 or more and there is no fee charge

Participation in Bitonite’s forex investment scheme costs an additional $100,000 to $300,000.

Bitonite Conclusion

Bitonite offers passive returns through purported cryptocurrency and forex trading. This constitutes a securities offering.

What Bitonite doesn’t offer is evidence it has registered its securities offering with financial regulators in the jurisdictions it solicits investment in.

SimilarWeb currently tracks top sources of traffic to Bitonite’s website as the US (25%), Finland (20%), the Netherlands (16%), France (15%) and Egypt (14%).

In the SEC, securities are regulated by the SEC. Bitonite’s forex investment scheme will also require registration with the CFTC.

Through a quick search of the SEC’s publicly available Edgar database, we can confirm neither Bitonite or its co-founders are registered.

This means that at a minimum, Bitonite is committing securities fraud. Securities fraud goes hand in hand with MLM companies running Ponzi schemes.

It should go without saying that adding education packages to investment fraud doesn’t legitimize it.

Instead of operating legally and registering with financial regulators, Bitonite offers up unverifiable trading results:

For the purpose of MLM due-diligence, and notwithstanding this is not a substitute for registration with financial regulators, this data is meaningless.

If we take a step back, with Bitonite we have two unknown crypto bros and a former Ponzi promoter. Out of the blue they met up with a bunch of traders and are now offering passive returns of up to 10% a month.

Toss in Dubai and all signs point to Bitonite running a Ponzi scheme. Attached to this is a pyramid scheme, by way of nothing being marketed to or sold to retail customers.

As with all MLM Ponzi schemes, once affiliate recruitment dries up so too will new investment.

This will starve Bitonite of ROI revenue, eventually prompting a collapse.

The math behind Ponzi schemes guarantees that when they collapse, the majority of participants lose money.

 

Update 4th June 2024 – Bitonite has collapsed.