I recently listened to a podcast by Peter McCormack about OneCoin. Read below about my experience back in 2015. ------
A few days ago I was invited to go a meetup on digital currency. Upon arrival, I noticed many people in attendance. There was a sign in sheet on a desk and I signed in and noticed the OneCoin logo on the top of the sheet. A few days earlier I read about OneCoin. From this point on I was on alert. In my prior readings, I learned that OneCoin was an Multi Level Marketing (MLM) company.
The presenter started his talk with a slide deck. The guy was slick, funny, and charismatic. Simultaneously, he came across as fraudster and a con man. He talked about the history of money and introduced digital currency. He mixed in some truths about Bitcoin and made some gross assumptions about his beloved OneCoin. The more he talked the more uneasy I felt.
He kept mixing in truth and assumptions about OneCoin and its future price projections. He talked about how many OneCoin millionaires that were made in the last 2 years. He then spoke about the founder, Dr. Ruja Ignatov, her educational accomplishments and financial acumen. I had never heard of her in cryptocurrency circles. Throughout his presentation he made many references to naysayers; bloggers, media outlets, and financial professionals that called OneCoin a scam. He told the audience to ignore those outsiders. He said they were just uninformed.
As he continued on, I started to wonder what was he selling? Since OneCoin is an MLM, they have to be selling something, right? The presenter made it very clear that they are selling Cryptocurrency education. Really? I could not believe it. They have packages starting at €100 up to €5000. He made reference to recruiting others and building your team or downline. The details of the compensation were not discussed, but I imagine the overrides must be pretty substantial.
Oh, I forgot to mention that he described some murky process in which the coins were mined. He stated that when someone purchases a package they receive some tokens and then those tokens are magically mined and turned into OneCoins. A picture of a mining warehouse with racks full of computers was shown. He said the mine was in some remote location. I was looking up various details as he spoke. Particularly, I went to http://coinmarketcap.com to see how much OneCoin traded for. The coin was not listed there, but the presenter showed a slide with OneCoin on it along with Bitcoin, Litecoin, and Ethereum. I searched for OneCoin and could not find any reputable crypto currency exchanges that traded OneCoin. However, I found several articles calling it a scam.
Maybe some people are making money with OneCoin, however the business model doesn't not seem legitimate to me. I would not be surprised to see this business shut down by the regulators at some point. I warn everyone to stay clear of OneCoin.
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