Mycoin.HK Packages Fiat Currency Ponzi Scheme as Guaranteed Bitcoin Payout

Over the course of this past weekend, we have received several reports regarding the Hong-Kong based Mycoin.hk, which apparently closed its doors without warning and ran away with a lot of users’ funds. The reason why this is important is because the Mycoin.hk platform packaged their investment plan so that customers would receive Bitcoin in return for a fiat currency investment. While the scheme itself looks a lot like a ponzi scheme, they did manage to collect a ton of money from unsuspecting investors, and give Bitcoin an even worse reputation at the same time.
Mycoin.hk – Mining Contracts, Bitcoin & Ponzi Scheme Structure
Original sources report that Mycoin.hk has been involved in some sort of mining contract ponzi scheme-esque deal, where users are promised a daily 0.64 Bitcoin payout after they make a massive upfront investment. It has to be said however that there are conflicting reports out there in regards to how much money has officially been stolen by Mycoin.hk.
According to the only somewhat reliable English news source we have found so far, Mycoin.hk left about 3,000 investors in the cold, with a combined loss of HK$3 billion. After doing some quick calculations, CryptoArticles has learned that HK$3 billion roughly translates to over 1.7 million Bitcoin. Do keep in mind that none of the original investments were made in Bitcoin, but only in HK$.

This post was published at Crypto Articles on February 9, 2015.