Yesterday, January 16th was a day that was charged with emotions.
There is, now, uncertainty on the Asian markets. With the announcement of new regulations on one of the world’s largest markets (South Korea) and restrictions on the Chinese. In addition, the French government has now launched a cryptocurrency program led by the former deputy Governor of the Bank of France.
And, after all of this, there was another blow struck against the world of crypto-finance.
Later last evening, users on the website Bitconnect.co received a notification that the company had made the decision to shut down their website for a few different reasons, namely, a DDOS attack, bad press and other legal reasons.
Goodbye, Bitconnect
With upcoming plans to make changes to the Bitconnect system, the company has now stopped all lending and trading operations. Here is what was said in a recent press release.
“At the moment, we wish to notify all of our community members of a suspension of all lending and trading operations on Bitconnect. This decision will take effect immediately and all outstanding lending transactions will be terminated. All active loans will immediately be released into the loan portfolio and a balance of $363.62 USD will be deposited into all Bitconnect portfolios.
This rate was calculated from the average closing price over the last 15 days from Coinmarketcap.com. Users are free to withdraw anything that is available in the QT wallets.
The BCC exchange platform will be fully shut down in 5 days times.
Overall, only the lending and exchange services will face suspension. The Bitconnect.co website will, however, remain functional for information and educational purposes.”
Valid Excuse?
According to the company’s promoters, they were forced to close their lending and trading operations for several reasons that were beyond their control.
“Recent bad publicity has made out members uncomfortable and has created an atmosphere of mistrust. We’ve also received two orders of cease and desist, one from the Texas State Securities Board and the other from the North Carolina Secretary of State Securities Division. These orders have become the main obstacle of the legal pursuits against our lending and exchange services.
There has also ben external DDos attacks on our system several times, which said that they were going to continue. The entirety of this has made the platform unstable and created panic in the Bitconnect community”
It Might Not Be the End
According to the Bitconnect team, the closure of their lending and trading platform does mean the end for the company.
To their developers, the closure is a chance that allows them to access other decentralized markets, offering even more trading opportunities. The team has already taken steps to make themselves available to merchant sites, including API access to the BCC on their platforms.
The Bitconnect team seems reassured that these changes will not be the end. They promise the website will remain functional.
For example, BitConnect X’s ICO is still fully-functional and a trading platform is currently under construction on their site.
A Ponzi Closing After the Crash?
Recently, the BCC had plummeted in value by about 95%. This was, however, predicted by many experts including Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum, who accused Bitconnect of being a Ponzi scheme. And now, even if there was some sort of miracle bot that was generating profits for their investors, we will never be able to find any evidence of it.
So far, the website is still out of order and none of their customers have received refunds.
