EtherLend provide no information on their website about who owns or runs the business.

The EtherLend website domain (“etherlend.org”) was privately registered on November 25th, 2017.

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.

EtherLend Products

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

The EtherLend Compensation Plan

EtherLend affiliates acquire ELEND points from EtherLend’s anonymous owners.

ELEND points are sold to EtherLend affiliates for 10 cents to 30 cents each.

$100 is the minimum amount of ELEND points that can be purchased in one transaction. $100,000 is the maximum.

Once acquired, ELEND points are “lent” back to EtherLend on the promise of a 2% to 7% daily ROI for 30 days.

EtherLend pay referral 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.

EtherLend cap payable unilevel levels at five, with commissions paid out as a percentage of funds invested as follows:

  • level 1 (personally recruited affiliates) – 8%
  • level 2 – 3%
  • levels 3 and 4 – 1%
  • level 5 – 0.5%

Joining EtherLend

EtherLend affiliate membership is tied to a minimum $100 investment.

Conclusion

EtherLend claim to generate ROI revenue through high-frequency trading, cryptocurrency arbitrage and trading.

The company however provides no evidence of any of these activities taking place.

Furthermore EtherLend’s business model fails the Ponzi logic test.

If EtherLend’s anonymous owners were able to consistently generate a daily ROI of up to 7%, why would they share that revenue with randoms over the internet?

7% a day is 2555% annually without compounding. Surely the smart thing to do would be to take out a small loan and retire as the richest people on the planet in a few years?

The reality of EtherLend is that new affiliate investment is the only verifiable source of revenue entering the company.

Using newly invested funds to pay existing affiliates a daily ROI makes EtherLend a Ponzi scheme.

Lending ICO Ponzis like EtherLend play out as follows:

The company’s admins (who are typically anonymous) offload worthless pre-generated points in exchange for real money. In this case it’s ELEND points.

The admins then use some of this money to pay promised ROIs for as long as new affiliates sign up.

Once affiliate recruitment dries up so does the ROI reserve.

When a predetermined threshold is reached, EtherLend’s admins pull a runner with what’s left.

Early EtherLend investors make a bit of money (mostly via recruitment of new investors). But same as any other Ponzi scheme, the reality of such scams is that the majority of participants eventually lose money.

A good case-study in the collapse of an ICO lending Ponzi scheme is BitConnect.

Launched in early 2017, a year later BitConnect’s admins did a runner and the public value of otherwise worthless BCC points crashed. This resulted in widespread investor losses.

DavorCoin was heavily promoted as a reload lending ICO Ponzi scam to BitConnect victims. DavorCoin also recently collapsed a few days ago.

The inevitable outcome of LendConnect will be no different. Those running EtherLend will make off with most of the money at the expense of their investors.