So you want to know if you should invest in One Coin? Is One Coin a scam or a fantastic opportunity to get rich? My review of this program is very personal, since I have been investigation this company for the last 2 years due to one of my good friends getting sucked into their emtpy promises of a new worldwide monetary unit and losing a rather large sum of money.
Verdict : Scam and Not Paying
Rating: 44/100
Summary: One Coin is a multilevel marketing company, which officially is offering training in cryptocurrency. In reality, they are selling their own internal cryptocurrency, which they claim will be the future monetary unit. Their cryptocurrency, which value the company does not guarantee has a different value on the internal and external market. So far there are no venues where the cryptocurrency can be used, not even internally.
The company has closed branches in several countries, including US and several European countries, including Finland and Germany have opened official investigations towards them. Additionally One Coin has been forced to chance banks due to their financial institution closing their accounts based on suspect of fraud.
They continue paying their affiliates, so people keep on signing new members in. However this is the only way anyone is getting money out of this company, as people are unable to sell their coins on the internal market and the external market is pretty dead too.
The Company: What makes this scam different from many others is that there is actually a legal company behind the scam. Onecoin Ltd is registered in Gibraltar, a known European offshore heaven for financial scams.
Until recently, the company had no real office and very few employees, as most of the work was conducted by contractors! They did however recently moved into an impressive building in Bulgaria’s capital Sofia, but their head office still remains in Dubai.
The company is led by Bulgarian Ruja Ignatova, who herself has a really shady background. Toted as a business woman of the year by the Bulgarian version of Forbes, her background is shady and there nobody has been able to verify her financial business experience and supposed law education. All the information released about her is very polished and her official Facebook page almost solely consist pictures of her in various events. Her LinkedIn profile does contain surprisingly little information and connections for such an accomplished person!
Score 7/10
The Website: www.onecoin.eu and the new www.onelife.eu are both registered by One.com and hosted by Cloudfare Inc in California. Their web farms are located in Bulgaria and Hong Kong. Everything in their whois record is available, except registrant, which in itself is rather strange.
Safe browsing also assures that the websites are safe for use and has reports of malware of phishing, neither is it recorded as a spammer, so we can assume that their websites are using the latest and secure setup.
www.onecoin.eu and the new www.onelife.eu both have a standard SSL certificate, issued by COMODO. Their registration runs out end of June 2017. Everything checks out from the safety and security point of view.
Score 9/10
The Program: As mentioned in my summary, One Coin officially sells training in cryptocurrency. The fact both the invoice and the disclaimer on the site states the person purchased a certain training package and cryptocurrency is only provided for educational purpose. serves two purposes:
- This circumvents the rules and regulations about not registering as a bank or financial institution. Although cryptocurrency, which is recognized by the law as a currency, is not covered by these laws, several countries are attempting to force cryptocurrency companies to get a financial license.
- This circumvents the changes to the new MLM laws, which regulate that the MLM company has to actually sell a product and cryptocurrency has been excluded from this list.
Their cryptocurrency is both closed source and centralized, which defies the whole purpose of having a cryptocurrency in the first place, as their main attractions and trust based on its open source code and decentralized structure. Officially the source code is closed because the company has fixed the Bitcoin flaws and of course claims to be better digital currency.
Additionally they state that it is important initially to control the value of the currency, before it has reached a certain market cap and has a stable supply and demand. Of course many other alternative crypto currencies have made it without this initial control.
The prices are ranging from 110€ to 100 000€ for an elite package, which all include the different levels of cryptocurrency training and also tokens for the cryptocurrency mining. However no mining is actually happening, the tokens are exchanged for a certain amount of cryptocurrency.
The program holds many additional twists, such the CoinSafe program. If you keep your coins for a certain amount of time, such as 6, 12 or 18 months, you will acquire ‘interest’ on your coins, similar to banks and other financial institutions. The coin also has frequent splits, in which the coin value, regulated by the company, is lowered and the investors get double the amount of coins.
The company also claims that that value of their coin is backed up with Arum Gold. This is their official statement:
Aurum Gold Coin® is a pioneer in the world of cryptocurrency. Each Coin is backed up by 10 mg of pure gold and 0.01 fractions of the cryptocurrency OneCoin. The gold is highly securely stored in a gold vault in Dubai. In your account you can see how much gold and OneCoins back up your AGC portfolio. This is the first ever cryptocurrency backed up simultaneously by both gold and another cryptocurrency. In other words, we have developed a cryptocurrency with double price security!!!
What a ridiculous idea, as the value of the cryptocurrency by its standards is set by the supply and demand of the coin. You can read more about this concept in my article: Is Dollar Collapse Imminent?
What is also strange is that after there started being too many scam reports and investigations of their program, they simply chanced the website name for the MLM program to OneLife, hereby separating the coin from the MLM program. It also helped to comply with the latest chances to the MLM law.
Score 4/10
The Compensation Plan: It is rather straight forward, you get 10% of the package price of your direct downline. If you have one of the higher packages, you can also earn up to 4 levels down fort he tycoon packages, the percentages being 10%-10%-20%-25%. They also have additional bonuses, such as the first 30 days after you joined, you can get 20% of their package prices instead of the usual 10%.
Like with most large MLM companies with One Coin you can earn ranks depending on how successful you are recruiting people into the business. These ranks ranging from Sapphire to Crown diamond grant you extra privileges, such as Apple electronics, a Rolex watches or diamond ring. In order to make any of these ranks, you need to invest enough money to buy one of the tycoon packages.
One Coin also has a OneLife club, which allows you to earn things such as luxury vacations, watches and other unnamed rewards, based on the value of the purchases your downline makes. All in all their package sounds pretty great, right?
Score 8/10
The Payouts: One Coin does currently pay their members the bonuses they have earned by sponsoring others on weekly basis. Only 6% of the earnings is paid out, the rest 4% is being placed on an other account and you have to buy tokens with this money. This is suppose to lead to demand on the internal exchange, but despite the best efforts of One Coin, their internal exchange is pretty much dead and nobody is able to sell their coins.
There have also been times when the payouts were delayed by several weeks, according to their spokesperson this was due to them changing banks. In order to withdraw money, you need to supply a KYC and the approval process is really long in an attempt to delay the payouts as long as possible. The fees for the bank transfer are currently set at a semi reasonable 15€.
The company has introduced a UnionPay MasterCard, which you can purchase for 100€ and use to withdraw your earnings on. The card is only valid for the amount deposited on it, making it a debit card and it has widespread acceptance issues.
Score 4/10
The Support: Like any affiliate program, One Coin also needs a support program. The support consists of email only and the response time depends on your inquiry. There are no phone numbers. All the Skype or WhatsApp groups are run by the leaders, not the company itself. If you want to join them and want to get some basic information, you will receive a friendly reply within few business hours.
If you are asking about the status of the KYC, missing payment, points and bonuses or complaining about not being able to sell your coins, the answer can take weeks, if ever. If you receive an answer it’s likely to be very generic, but hey, you should count yourself lucky, as more and more often these are left unanswered. The support personnel is definitely non-native English speaking.
Score 2/10
The Marketing: If there is something One Coin is good at, it’s marketing. One Coin is one big marketing machine, which is partially reason for it’s huge success. There is huge amount of marketing materials available, from banners, to presentations and videos. They arrange huge luxury events in exotic locations, with local celebrities and politicians. The events hype on any of the latest chances and reward local leaders, the show is rather spectacular. Their figure head is Ruja Ignatova herself, she travels around the world, dressed like a pricess and has achieves a cult like following.
One Coin is also running their own charity called One World Foundation. It claims to be active in 22 countries and have supported so far, at the time of writing this article 55 projects and helped 4448 children and youth. Their motto is:
Empower Children to Reach Their Potential through Education and Long-Term Support!
Funnily enough this foundation is actually working via the members, who donate their One Coins or of course cash for their cause! There is also very little evidence of all these project ever taking place. This was actually the first so called product of their so called ecosystem, which also by now includes investment funds, a casino, where you can play with your OneCoins, but not withdraw them and an auction MLM company that One Coin bought.
One Coin plans to add a partnership program of businesses which are willing to accept One Coin as a currency, but there is so far no release date beyond the 1M members within the next 18 months statement together with a Merchant App.
Score 6/10
The Grapevine: There are plenty of people still making money with One Coin and the Internet is split in their opinions. Some truly believe tha One Coin will make them rich one say. They save their coins as an investment and keep on recruiting new people to generate the huge market cap that is needed for good supply and demand in order for the One Coin to emerge as a new world standard as toted by One Coin.
Most people though have long time ago realized that One Coin is a clever ponzi scheme, where the only people who will ever make money with One Coin are the leaders and the owner. Social media is full of scam warnings and even several websites exist solely to warn people about joining to One Coin. Also since people cannot sell their coins, you see tycoon packages for re-sale by people desperate to recover at least some of their money for under a quarter of their new value.
Score 2/10
My Honest Thoughts: One Coin is one big scam. I personally think it was never intended to be more than a short term ponzi scheme. However after it gained popularity, there has been some attempt to legalize some of it’s aspects and add more depth to the program. This is not enough to convince me of their honorable intension though as in my opinion this is just done in order to keep the game rolling little bit longer, in order to make few more billions for the business owners.
I am not alone with my doubts, authorities in several countries are investigating this company and many more have issues warnings. This alone is enough for me to advice people to practice extreme caution when thinking about joining this scheme!
Score 2/20
Kisses Xena
Confused about how to actually make money online legally? Take a look at here for my recommendations: How To Earn Money Online Legally – Key To Success
Hi Xena,
I am glad I found this article now! One of my friends mentioned this OneCoin but I thought he was talking about BitCoin, I didn’t realize this existed at the time. It sounds like they were trying to copy BitCoin. The fact that they have no phone numbers sets alarm bells ringing for me.
Customer Service is one thing I always look for first. In my opinion, it is the biggest plus-point of any company. Email-only is not a good option. At the very least I would expect online chat for help. I review products on a regular basis and online chat is a pre-requisite in my opinion.
Thanks for sharing this. I have one question, do you have experience of BitCoin?
Hi Craig, yes, many people get confused by OneCoins claims for it being a new and better version of Bitcoin! This is one part of their intentional marketing towards people who know very little about cryptocurrencies. Just take a look at their marketing videos on their site! If you listen to them, you will think: WOW, this is exactly what the world needs. Yes, we need cryptocurrency, but definitely not one controlled by greedy people!
I agree, good customers service is essential! It’s one of the first things I investigate with any programs. Thank you for your insights.
http://behindmlm.com/companies/onecoin/onecoin-kicked-out-of-gibraltar-virtual-office-struck-off-register/
Well this just happened.
Follow the story for original source documentation and proof therein provided.
Score should be close to 0/100
In fact, if you review this independent and neutral, 3rd party RESEARCH PAPER, I think you’ll agree:
https://nawaader.files.wordpress.com/2016/12/onecoin-research-paper-islamic-ruling1.pdf
Please review, as There are well over 200 hyperlinks sourcing original supporting proof and substantiating evidence PROVING the scam.
Am looking forward to your updates. Thank you.
Hi Tim,
thnx for the links. I am Zeus, the second admin on this site. Xena’s scam reviews are little different as you might have noticed. She doesn’t concentrate so much into reposting proofs from others as we both know this can be easily faked. (before you get mad, I didn’t say it’s so in this case)
Instead she runs her own investigation, which take months, as she actually joins the programs and draws her own conclusions. Take a look at some of her other reviews and then you see how she works. He is a peek into her methods:
About Scams Exposer
Getting Close and Personal With Xena – Interview With Admin
Besides this, she is involved in taking online scams down. I know she has a lot of evidence in the case of OneCoin, but she cannot present it due to the ongoing case. Not everything is always as simple as it looks.
Not all the scam reports need to be the same.
Peace,
Zeus
Hi Tim,
I think Zeus put it down well. I am not sure why you feel the need to attack me and my methods? If you actually even bother to read about my methods you would understand how my scoring is done!
Do you somehow believe all the reviews should be exactly the same? I do not at any point in my interview actually promote OneCoin? Do I provide any sponsoring links to them? I guess you will find NO as an answer to both!
I am guessing you didn’t in fact even bother reading my review, instead you started to comment about your doubts of my integrity based on a very low score I gave this program, which in your opinion wasn’t low enough!
Also what exactly do you mean that you are looking forward of updates? And what if I don’t link to the reviews you are promoting? Then what? I am little confused here Tim, so I am going to simply ignore what sounds like a threat to me!
There are several holes in this story by behindmlm and the comments to this very short update are not very insightful to be honest. This is the reason I don’t often link to people’s complains; they are not very constructive and lack any useful information.
Also for your knowledge, despite what behindmlm claims, OneCoin still states they are registered in Gibraltar and gives their address there as well on their website. Take a look and you will find this information yourself. Secondly OneCoin is still unfortunately registered as Ltd, I am not keen on proving this proof, but anyone with a little digging and by paying an official fee can actually obtain these documents.
Why am I not keen on proving positive proof? I absolutely believe OneCoin is a scam. I also have stated in my comments that I believe it will be shut down within 3 months.
Please note that I don’t respond kindly to treats.
Tim,I am not sure what got you so cooked up mate? Xena, who I personally know and have worked with in our mission to INVESTIGATE and officially REPORT online scams for the last 7 years, clearly states she believes OneCoin is a ponzi scheme. Her scores are simply based on certain categories and you gotta admit mate that OneCoin does have a good marketing campaign going on! How do you believe they can still continue with some many ongoing investigations to their activities? Because they have a huge marketing machine pushing out BS after BS, fobbing unsuspecting people. Also despite the websites they own are secure, so there should be no complain about Xena giving a good score in this category. Threats are never good mate, Xena is well protected due to the important work she does. It’s actually zealots like you, who made her take a break for few years from this ugly business, not the bad guys.
Tim, the reasons that OneCoin had so many people going for it, has to be recognized. Xena nailed it: Great marketing, even greater compensation plan and secure websites. Why are you so upset? Did you also lose money with them? No reason to take it out on Xena.
Well first of all my partner is actually Bulgarian (from Sofia although she lives in Wales with me!) and she would be the first to admit that a majority of the companies that set up in this area are to be avoided!
It immediately put me on a red alert!
When you put this together with the fact that One Coin is a MLM…well…there’s really nothing to hang about for is there?
I find MLM a strange beast – I think the marketing side of their plans are always set up perfectly as they attract so many newbies. The problem is of course that 90% of MLM members never make a dime – the remaining 10% take it all.
You do mention new MLM rules in your article – I was wondering what they were and if they were put in place to stop pyramid systems?
Hi Chris,
Thank you for your insights. I am happy to hear these thoughts about the OnceCoin scam from a Bulgarian citizen.
There are a lot of MLM coin companies out there, it yet remains to be seen if one of them is eventually not a scam, I have ongoing investigations about some that look rather legit so far, so I am kinda undecided if I should write about them or not. Waiting for the right moment I guess. I have written my insights on MLM here: What Is Network Marketing Business All About? MLM wroks for some people and as such it’s not a bad way to promote your products.
The new MLM laws passed in US and being taken up by EU next year indicate a lot of changes. I am going to write an article, where I explain the law text in human readable man terms within the next few weeks. Few of the most important changes have gotten big companies in trouble, you might have heard about the court case against Herbalife? Here are just 3 top ones:
1) You need to have a real product
2) Most of your income must come from real product, not the fees from people joining the scheme
3) The people in your program must earn by selling products, not by recruiting other people.
This is really well put together Xena. Different from all the other OneCoin reviews that only contain a lot of links to people’s complains. I like the fact that you actually properly investigated this one for almost a year before writing this review. I am sure you will keep on adding stuff to it as things unfold!
Hi Xeus, thnx for your vote of confidence. Yes, I am planning on keeping this review upto date, as I am expecting this company to collapse within the next 3 months!
Hi Xena, one more great review. I see something heated going on in the comments 😀 Typical on your blogs 😀 What bugs me about most OneCoin reviews that they are so partial! Either they are by people who still believe in the crap or by the zealots who don’t admit that OneCoin has anything good to it.
Yes, they do have secure servers, great marketing and absolutely fabulous compensation plan, which is why they got so many people involved in the first place.
Hi Dianosys,
Yes, it’s funny, sometimes I think she does it on purpose just to get the crowds in. You are right, it is important to examine WHY a scam has gotten such a huge following.
Hi Zeus, Apollo and Xena,
My apologies if you feel I came off as upset. I wasn’t.
You did a great review. No doubt.
I just see Onecoin under a different light, being that it should be 0/100 rating having been investigating it for 18+ months.
Your review was more subjective on the MLM side while my critique is more from the Cryptocurrency angle.
Anyway, keep up the good work and thanks for the review.
Cheers 🙂
Hi Tim,
I have looked at your work last night. You have been examining the OneCoin blockchain, so this is indeed from a different perspective than Xena wrote hers, who examined the MLM side of it. I will forward your article to Xena, who is actually a cryptocurrency expert and heavily involved in the fight against OneCoin blockchain.
You are giving a rating to a ponzi-pyramid scheme? Really? You got to be kidding me.
And 8/10 of being a top notch pyramid scam! Well, this certainly is encouraging to all those who’d love to make some dough by luring their loved ones into this scheme.
I give you credit for the final verdict, but this article contains some ridiculous aspects what comes to reviewing a ponzi scheme.
Ari,
I suggest you read the comments section, you will understand the point of view the article was written. You will see explanations WHY it is important to ALSO examine the good parts in every program.
Why? Because it’s important to examine WHY a particular ponzi scheme got so big before it fell apart. Gain some perspective, broaden your horizons and stop calling others way of view ridiculous.
Hi Ari, I think Zeus said it well. Read the other comments and you will get little bit more insight. It sounds like you have never actually been part of MLM program, which this review is based on. Many scam sites are also filled with malware and viruses, which this One Coin doesn’t have, hence the high score. Remember, not all reviews need to be the same, that would be rather boring!
Hi Xena and Zeus
Well, you are right, I have never been involved in MLM. Then again I have been following scams based on MLM before, and OneCoin since its early days back in the beginning of 2015. I see it as a 100 % scam. Giving ratings to this shady scheme is pointless from my point of view and I don’t even get it what’s the basis for the ratings you have given.
For example you mention that OneCoin “officially sells training in cryptocurrency”. As far as I know the educational material doesn’t consist much about cryptocurrency. Furthermore OneCoin doesn’t have educational levels to cover the most expensive packages.
“There are plenty of people still making money with One Coin”. This is not so simple. There are countries where OneCoin has already been withering away, for example Finland. According to Pablo Munoz even England is in a stagnant state. I would presume that there are already a lot of countries where it would be very hard to make money since the pyramid has already achieved its maximum height. Also the bad reputation OneCoin has and frozen bank accounts are likely to hinder its further growth.
I can respect your MLM based view on rating scams. However, OneCoin is nothing but a ponzi built on pyramid marketing. Rating it as an MLM is like rating a pedophile as a catholic priest.
You are of course entitled to you views. If you read the content of the link I sent in my first response, you will understand the rating little bit more. To be honest I feel that you just want to argue as in some way you feel that we are supporting One Coin? We are not, which should be clear from the article. If you cannot understand that there is value in examining why a particular MLM program was able to operate so long and fool so many people, then I guess we have our wires crossed. One of the functions of this website, which doesn’t seem clear to you is to actually prevent the scams growing and getting hold on cheating people in the first place.
What comes to One Coin being banned, being under investigation or not operating legally in some countries, is also covered in this article, did you actually read the whole article or just get stuck to the ratings you didn’t like?
We can assure you this website is working very hard taking One Coin down and informing MLM people why they shouldn’t invest in it. We have made some clear progress during the holidays, but are not within liberty of revealing everything in public.
Clearly you cannot or don’t want to see the value in us working in protecting the people who are seeking legal MLM, affiliate and investment programs online, which is fine. Each to their own. Let us separate in the ways we see things and try to respect each others opinions.
“You are of course entitled to you views. If you read the content of the link I sent in my first response, you will understand the rating little bit more.”
– The ratings with the exact numbers you have given seem a bit odd considering that many of these scams are shady, opaque and some of them are much more complex than others. It doesn’t help that your review on OneCoin has some misinformation included.
“To be honest I feel that you just want to argue as in some way you feel that we are supporting One Coin?”
– Nope, I can read though I’m not a native English speaker.
“What comes to One Coin being banned, being under investigation or not operating legally in some countries, is also covered in this article, did you actually read the whole article or just get stuck to the ratings you didn’t like?”
– Yes, I read it and pointed out some flaws considering your review on OneCoin. You don’t mind having misinformation there?
“Clearly you cannot or don’t want to see the value in us working in protecting the people who are seeking legal MLM, affiliate and investment programs online, which is fine.”
– My goal is to prevent people from getting involved in OneCoin ponzi pyramid scheme. However I sure can admit that I don’t endorse people to get involved in MLM in the first place. I have not seen much good coming out of MLM.
Isn’t it funny that “you have to protect the people seeking legal MLM” from the illegal ones? That pretty much sums up what we are dealing with. There of course are legal MLM opportunities out there but the line between them and the schemes must be a vague one. Otherwise you wouldn’t be rating them.
I give my comment a solid 10/10.
WE ARE TAKING THE LIBERTY HERE TO ENSURE YOUR NARCISSISTIC (I GIVE MYSELF A SOLID 10/10, I KNOW THINGS BETTER THAN YOU, I AM THE GREATEST) WILL NEVER BE POSTED ON OUR WEBSITES AGEAIN. WE ARE WELL AWARE OF YOU, YOU BACKGROUND, KNOW WHY YOU ARE SO BITTER AND HAVE FOLLOWED YOUR ZEALOT TACTICS. AS YOU IN RETURN KNOW NOTHING OF US! BE HAPPY WE ARE NOT SPAMMING YOU BACK. PEOPLE LIKE YOU ARE THE REASON WHY WEBSITES THAT ARE ACTUALLY ATTEMPTING HELPING PEOPLE ARE SO RARE AND FAR IN BETWEEN. YOU ARI ARE A JERK.
REGARDS ZEUS BEHALF OF THE WHOLE SCAMSEXPOSERS.COM
As by Zeus’ decision you are banned from ever commenting on this website again. And yes, we will see if you are pretending to be someone else. Your non-native mistakes are rather clear.
We have received more insult and verbal attacks with SEXUAL content from our lovely Finnish visitor Ari Widell, please ensure that you will not allow this person post on your pages. We will be taking action on behalf of ScamsExposer.com as sexual attacks are actually rather severe in nature, should have checked and known this Ari, appologies for anyone who has taken offence.
Thank you for sharing Xena!
I’ve been involved in SCAMS like this before. I live in the US and my friends and family were suckered into buying Iraq currency by mail in hopes that the Iraq government would make a big improvement and the money could then be turned back into US currency and you would become wealthy.
It’s been well over a decade and the Iraq currency is still in rubbles and we will most likely never see a return on investment.
These predators are everywhere Xena and I am sure glad that there are good people on this planet to expose their ugly scams and awful lies. The story you tell of One coin is truly a sign of what this world is becoming. People and companies LIE so much that they actually believe it themselves!
Thanks for being SCAM exposure!
Cheers
Hi David, thnx for your comment. Ah, the famous currency scams. In fact that’s what cryptocurrency scams are all about as well. They get people to believe that cryptocurrency will increase in value hugely and they can collect the profit.
There are predators as long as there are willing victims, unfortunately. No problem, that’s what I’m here for!
Hi, Xena looks like you have reviewed a scam and apparently is making a buzz here in the comments section.
It’s scary that the internet is full of scams but I am sure sites like this will kill all the shady programs available.
I always wonder why Google indexes these scams without verifying their legitimacy?
Thanks for sharing and have a good day 🙂
Hi Anis!
Making a report about a long running scam always makes a buzz. You will get a lot of people who still either believe in it or make money with it, versus zealots who believe it’s not worth learning anything wrong the scam, which is what I tend to do in order to learn how to prevent them and identify them early, so I can stop them from taking off.
The worst thing is when they are actually allowed to useGgoogle adwords to advertise themselves! Example here: Why Is Google Agreeing To Advertise A New HYIP Scam
Google really should know better.