There has been quite the buzz over a coin called The Billion Coin (TBC), so I decided to dig in and see what all the fuss was about. TLl;DR version – it’s a scam, stay away at all costs.
The actual market cap of TBC
Table of Contents
When I perform research on potentially profitable cryptocurrencies, I start by looking them up on Coin Market Cap. It’s a nice way to check out the price, volume, history, and this site has links to various resources about any given coin.
Unfortunately, I came to a dead end from the get-go, as TBC isn’t listed on there. No big deal, there are a lot of brand new coins that aren’t listed yet and truthfully, finding a coin in its infancy has the potential to offer 10x profits.
So Is TBC One Of These 10x Or Even 100x Coins?
Now let’s check and see if The Billion Coin is on World Coin Index. Again, no luck, it’s not listed there either. So it’s time to run a Google search and check out their website, TheBillionCoin.info. At first glance, it appears to be one of those cheesy slider WP themes that no one uses much anymore, at least not anyone who is running a cryptocurrency promotional website.
On the site, the makers claim that The Billion Coin has a market cap in fourth place behind Bitcoin, Ethereum and Litecoin. That seems like a stretch considering I have never heard about TBC until a couple days ago. Given the fact that I study the crypto industry day in and day out, I’m going to have to say that is a lie. If that was indeed true, TBC would be listed on Coin Market Cap.
The next image on their slider says, “get out of debt fast”. Seems like they are preying on the emotional side of desperate people, a classic telltale sign of a scam. The picture of the woman cutting up her credit cards is what anyone should do if they are thinking about buying this coin so they don’t end up losing everything they have.
It gets even worse. According to the website, the current price of 1 TBC as of a few days ago was allegedly worth 68.2 Bitcoin, roughly $286,000. However, today, the website claims that 1 TBC is worth 105.93 BTC. So the price of each TBC is 105 BTC, yet isn’t even listed on Coin Market Cap? It’s almost comical that anyone would think this is true.
Apparently, The Billion Coin can be purchased and sold on their exchange, yet only there and nowhere else. They have a page and even a YouTube video (which not surprisingly has comments disabled) on their website dedicated to buying and selling TBC on their exchange. However, the actual exchange is, “offline for maintenance” so who knows if it was ever online to begin with.
The main question remains – Why isn’t TBC exchanged on public exchanges like every other cryptocoin?
So, it should be clear at this point that anyone who is thinking about buying TBC should steer clear. However, people who still have a shred of hope in this project should continue to read further.
The Billion Coin website
According to the website, TBC is going up 2 percent per day, every day. In other words, the creators of this scam claim that the price never drops and always goes up. That’s not logical at all if the market dictates the price. Markets go up and they go down. This is why the logic behind perpetual profits is fallible.
According to the TBC website, original stakeholders who purchased €100 of TBC on March 21, 2016 all received 10,000x gains in 6 months and are all millionaires. Then, they go on to say that anyone who purchases soon will earn similar gains. At the very end, it says, “buy as much TCB as you can afford today. The price of TBC will never be this low again!”
As stated before, at the time of writing, the alleged price for 1 TBC was 68 BTC and it is now 105 BTC, so it would be tough to really load up on it.
Creating 1 Billion Millionaires
Creating 1 billion millionaires, that’s the mission of TBC, or so they say. TBC also wants to end world poverty. In all reality, the makers have lined their pockets scamming people and have completely disappeared.
It appears that TBC was active on their blog between April 2016 and June 2016, but haven’t published a post since. Their last blog post shows a meeting in Nigeria with pictures of people holding a sheet of paper. I would guess they are unfortunate TBC holders.
I took the liberty to create an account on the TBC website, but I didn’t receive a confirmation email, even in my spam folder. The people behind this might just be looking for a way to collect email addresses so don’t worry, I used a throwaway address. It looks like whoever was running this scam has completely disappeared, took the money, and ran.
TBC On Bitcointalk
Enough with their cheap website, let’s take a look at what members on Bitcointalk have to say.
Bitcointalk has a post that was started on May 16, 2016 about TBC. The original poster, savasori has a trust rating of -2, meaning trade with caution. He basically explains the idea behind TBC in one large block of text that is nearly impossible to read. The second comment by Woody20285 sums it all up pretty well.
Anyone who has been in the cryptocurrency industry long enough knows that this type of scenario could never be true.
Another comment by leigh2k14, a legendary member on the forum says, “Time to sell the wife and kids, I’m all in on this bad boy.” You’ve got to appreciate the sarcasm.
At the end of this Bitcointalk discussasks, one user ask, “[is]this [a]scam or not?” Mr.Pro, a senior member quickly replied with, “I don’t know if you are blind or dumb or maybe it could be both.”
The TBC Wallet Is Disabled
In relatively recent news, the TBC web wallet was disabled on January 31, 2017, and all holders were encouraged to move their coins to yet another centralized site that apparently doesn’t work either.
Since there are no open exchanges that allow for TBC to be traded and the TBC mediated exchange doesn’t work, holders have to convince others to buy the coins. With p2p sales, generally on FaceBook, the only way to sell TBC is to rope someone else into the scam.
Allegedly, holders were trying to sell their TBC coins though Facebook groups for less than $0.05 each, a far cry from the listed price of $286,000 each, just to recoup some of their losses.
The real value of TBC is 0, truthfully, it is absolutely worthless so do not allow these con artists to separate you from your money by buying this coin.
Who Does This Scam Target?
This scam isn’t targeted at people who are already actively trading cryptocurrencies and understand the business. Instead, the TBC scam is aimed at people in third world countries, trying to separate them from their hard earned money. For the most part, The Billion Coin is being heavily promoted in Africa and the Philippines. TBC scam artists are simply robbing poor people. The sad truth is that they’re good at it.
The sad truth is that they’re good at it. According to Similar Web, TBC’s site gets around 500K visits a month.
Don’t Buy The Billion Coin!
To recap, the TBC scam took place between April 2016 and June 2016. If this scam, or one similar to it comes back online, avoid it like the plague. Needless to say, don’t invest in anything that makes impossible claims of something for nothing. I can also assume that the name – TBC was intentionally chosen in order to confuse people with Bitcoin’s accronym BTC.
While the makers of The Billion Coin claim that their goal was to make 1 billion millionaires and battle world poverty, it’s clear that the real goal was to scam 1 billion people out of €100. If you’re presented with the opportunity to buy The Billion Coin avoid it at all costs. In the future remember that 99Bitcoins supplies you tools like the Bitcoin Scam Test to try and asses whether cryptocurrency opportunities are legit or not.
Had your own experience with TBC? I would love to hear about it in the comment section below.
Eric Wolff
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