Up2Give Review: Monthly bitcoin gifting scheme
Up2Give provides no information on their website about who owns or runs the company.
As I write this, Up2Give’s website demands an affiliate referral username. Once you add that in, you’re presented with a marketing video and signup form. That’s it.
Up2Give’s website domain (“up2give.com”) was privately registered on August 27th, 2019.
Further research reveals Up2Give promoters naming Jerry Lopez as CEO of the company:
I was able to verify this through a YouTube video titled “64 BTC Earning opportunity with Up2give.Full business presentation. Pre- Launch stage.”
In the video Lopez (right) identifies himself as “CEO and Founder of Up2Give” at [0:45].
I was able to trace Lopez’s MLM history to 2014, the year he joined LyfeStart International. Eight months later Lopez jumped ship for Savi Health.
Lopez’s foray into the MLM crypto underbelly appears to have begun roughly four months ago through Dunamis Global Tech.
Dunamis Global Tech recently went under and was sold off to Onyx Lifestyle.
Read on for a full review of Up2Give’s MLM opportunity.
Up2Give’s Products
Up2Give has no retailable products or services, with affiliates only able to market Up2Give affiliate membership itself.
Up2Give’s Compensation Plan
New Up2Give affiliates make gifting payments in bitcoin to existing affiliates.
These payments are tracked via 2×1 and 2×6 matrices.
A 2×1 matrix is simple in nature, housing only two positions required to be filled.
A 2×6 matrix expands the concept down six levels:
The first level of a 2×6 matrix houses two positions. The second level of the matrix houses four positions, the third level eight positions and so on and so forth.
Up2Give uses the 2×1 matrix as a feeder. All new affiliates start here after paying their 0.005 BTC ongoing monthly fee.
In order to recoup this fee, two affiliates must be personally recruited to fill the 2×1 matrix.
This equates to 0.01 BTC in received gifting payments each month.
These payments are used to fund entry into the 2×6 matrix.
Each level of the 2×6 matrix operates as a gifting tier as follows:
- level 1 – gift 0.01 BTC and receive 0.01 BTC from two filled positions
- level 2 – gift 0.01 BTC and receive 0.01 BTC from four filled positions
- level 3 – gift 0.02 BTC and receive 0.02 BTC from eight filled positions
- level 4 – gift 0.05 BTC and receive 0.05 BTC from sixteen filled positions
- level 5 – gift 0.25 BTC and receive 0.25 BTC from thirty-two filled positions
- level 6 – gift 1 BTC and receive 1 BTC from sixty-four filled positions
Note that unlike the 2×1 matrix feeder, positions in the 2×6 matrix can be filled via direct and indirect recruitment.
Joining Up2Give
Up2Give affiliate membership is tied to an initial 0.005 BTC monthly gifting payment.
Full participation in Up2Give’s income opportunity costs 1.345 BTC a month.
Conclusion
Up2Give is a simple gifting scam.
New affiliates sign up and gift bitcoin to existing affiliates. These payments in turn qualify affiliates to receive gifting payments from affiliates recruited after them.
I came across the usual bullshit used to promote MLM gifting scams. Terms such as donations, causes and crowdfunding are all used.
What differentiates gifting scams like Up2Give however is payments qualifying participants to receive payments from other participants.
This is a hallmark of gifting scams. No legitimate crowdfunding, donation or “cause” platform works like this.
Gifting schemes share the same recruitment dependency as pyramid schemes, meaning once recruitment slows down they collapse.
Math dictates that when a gifting scheme like Up2Give inevitably collapses, the majority of participants lose money.
Andreas Kartrud now identifies himself as co-founder of up2give on his LinkedIn-page. He has an extensive CV when it comes to Ponzi scams.
He started out in OneCoin, but got out fairly quickly. Probably realized he was late in the game. Instead he got into SwissCoin where he was one of the top promotors.
He was even named sales manager at a conference in Dubai, but soo after that he was not.
After the coin was dumped on an exchange where it crashed, and the project sold he got out, claiming to be a victim like everyone else.
Since then he has been in Arconix, PlusToken and WoToken. The story has been the same, he starts out pushing leader talk and his close relations to “the company”.
When all goes sour, he is just a cheated investor, never mind the downlines he has gained from.
He can be relatively safe in Sweden, where even OneCoin has so far been untouched with a large number of people affected.
He builds his downlines in Africa, Asia and the Caribbean. If he tried to scam people in his hometown he would soon “go missing”.
Kartrud is trying to kick off up2give in the UK with meetings at the Moxy hotel in Stratford, London 10-11 January.
Judging by FB comments there are a fair bit of people interested in attending.
For those of you considering Up2Give, STAY AWAY.
Andreas Kartrud heavily promoted wotoken, which locked up a bunch of people’s cryptos (millions of dollars) without warning, consent, or explanation and months later, Andreas and his supposed senior uplines refuse to give any answers or talk about this obvious problem.
Andreas was even so bold as to continue to assert that wotoken is a legitimate investment and he insults and blocks people who question him about this obvious problem called lack of transparency.
People have been tracking the movement of their cryptos through many different wallets, and they continue to move.
Beware of these so-called investments based in China, Malaysia, Singapore, and Vietnam. If something sounds too good to be true, it probably is. STAY AWAY FROM THIS INTERNET CON ARTIST.
Also, beware of Sean E Starr (who is especially in kahootz with Andreas) and Vladislov Stefanov.
For those of you looking for good investments, BE CAREFUL. There is an enormous number of con artists and scams lurking out there in this relatively new fronteir known as cryptocurrency.
Cryptocurrency isn’t new. It’s been around for over ten years. We’ve been covering MLM cryptocurrency scams for at least five years now.
The only thing I’ll give you is that there continues to be new victims (mostly in Asia and Africa), although maybe that’s slowing down.
Not new, just relatively new. what happened with bitcoin and people becoming millionaires overnight is still fresh in people’s minds and these crypto scammers are taking advantage of that, aka FOMO (fear of missing out).
This week there are events planned in the UK. London, Stratford UK @ Moxy London Hotel Jan 9-11.
Andreas Kartrud will be there, don’t know about Lopez.
Kartrud is building up a team in Malmö, Sweden. Some of them have been part of his previous scams, like Blerim Shabani and Stefan Hoeing but he is also recruiting younger guys.
In paralell I see them promoting an art based token, 4Art. I don’t know if that’s on your radar, Oz. I haven’t looked into it, but if these guys are involved it’s generally no good.
It seems they officially launched Jan 15. There are Facebook groups with thousands of members but they are all private.
Seems Kartrud has learned about keeping stuff out of public view. Most of his sordid history of scamming is out there to find.
There was a message on Jan 7 that they officially partnered with STI Success Training Institute (nolink://simplysuccess.com) to create Up2Give Academy.
Sure enough, when you look up STI price list, there’s an MLM opportunity where you can get referral bonuses. Can’t tell if there’s a Ponzi element there or not.
And puh-leeeaze, this is not a disruptive program that will “help solve some of the worlds most obvious problems through the power of giving”, it’s a good old gifting scheme.
We have been used to scams being marketed openly and boldly in open Facebook groups, but it seems Up2give is taking another direction.
Everything is taken to private groups or Telegram. Members are berated if they market on open groups or their FB wall.
Finally Andreas Kartrud is a great scammer it’s proof. Just now he was leave from Up2Give.
Where is that information from? I can’t see anything about it on his FB wall.
Then again, he has been pushing for keeping all information in private channels. Philantropy failing already?
@Akash Chopra, again, what is your source for Kartrud leaving Up2give?
He is still administrator in the major Facebook groups, all private. He posted a week ago about yet another partner of Up2give, UULaLa.
A blockchain banking provider which seems to be in ICO. Oscar Garcia is said to be running UULaLa.
Kartrud has been in Facebook jail for some time, but is back now. That should explain it.
And there is really not more proof needed he is a scammer.
Apparently Up2Give silently morphed into PrimeGate, a hare-brained scheme talking about IoT and creating a mesh network.
Of course it also has a crypto part to it where you mine (why?)
You are supposed to purchase a City Developer License and then recruit other users in your city, selling hardware and services.
youtube.com/watch?v=9gRsCRJuHPc
I suspect the PrimeGate Lora Hub is just a cheap and nasty router that serves as a hotspot.
This looks near identical to iHub Global I reviewed earlier this month. The pitch anyway.
Seems like mesh wifi networks + crypto mining is a new fad to watch out for.
I’ve queued Up2Give / PrimeGate for a review update, will look into it more when it comes up. Thanks.