A picture is worth a thousand words or, in this case, a con-trillion BCCX ...
I don't know what that was trying to show except prove that the volumes are really low and bitconnect
didn't ever in their history seem to dump their BCC (how scam coins profit). They are even taking it as worth $150 in the new ICO. Also, aren't they raising $13million worth of cryptos every day? Not sure what your "U$.250M" figure was about. Assuming they aren't making it up, they could have made about $12million more each day if they didn't accept BCC for $150.
Many people think bitcoin is a bubble or 'non-deliberate' Ponzi (
https://businesstech.co.za/news/finance/202958/what-bitcoin-has-in-common-with-the-mmm-ponzi-scheme-according-to-russia/ and
https://news.bitcoin.com/professor-sec-bitcoin-penny-stock-ponzi/) and going by the history of the fiat currency and the lack of controls globally on money supply it has to be said it operates in a similar way with repeated boom and busts.
A scam Ponzi coin would collapse when the devs or owners dump the coins. The lending system actually offers protections against this to investors (now that you understand how all these cryptos are ponzis in the sense of being zero-sum). Even Amazon never offered dividends on its stocks and the price has risen at absurd rates from inception. The argument with stocks with no profit share or buy backs is that the company can be acquired at a premium if they are successful and this will obviously mean the shareholders could benefit in the future when companies make profit, unlike cryptos which don't need to be bought back when a company is acquired and don't act like normal shares. Even non-scam cryptos for the most-part including bitcoin are simply speculation and a zero sum game which most people should be aware of when investing (i.e. they are a non-deliberate Ponzi or speculative bubble).
I think if you look at it outside its marketing (their terms are pretty clear though that they can change the lending rates) BitConnect were never a Ponzi and they only paid rates sustainable compared to the growth of the coin. They generated wealth with the lending rates but the coin price still increased dramatically despite up to 100% per year staking inflation. There was no reason for this not to continue (probably with more sustainable interest rates) and they could have carried on generating profits for a while.
I'm assuming they sold their extra BCC from the lending rates as profit to further grow, otherwise it would still act similarly to a share buy back by reducing the circulation of the coin. The bottom line is that the lending was profitable and also made lenders happy with their share of the return. They had been reducing their rates already so they never even got into their BCC reserves - something else that should make holders optimistic of the future.
So on the surface the marketing seemed deceptive but the massive returns were always paid on time so there was no real fraud perpetrated, especially considering 'all' cryptos are non-deliberate ponzis. The bitconnect system generated the company profits which they could use to invest and generate more income and coin growth. Many legitimate stocks end up at almost zero value due to people selling and companies failing but that doesn't make them a ponzi. On the other hand, bitconnect generated lots of income from the lending rates and so to call them a ponzi (when nearly all cryptos are already non-deliberate ponzis) is a bit far-fetched. They found a system which allowed them to grow their coin value while still generating huge profits (
almost no other coin generates profits like that). The competition didn't help, but bitconnect was the first and should have been able to carry on if it wasn't for the bad press and legal issues.
