I'm pretty sure people are holding onto bitcoins because they think it is going to go up in value. It's not as if it can be used for anything else other than some sort of speculative asset with nothing backing it.
Bitcoin can be used for a lot of things. Bitconnect couldn't be used for anything other than their lending ponzi scheme.
All tokens don't really have any other backing other than supply and demand. At least bitconnect's model always worked despite all the bad press and made many people very rich.
It doesn't seem to be working anymore.
I didn't invest much in it. Most of mine is in DavorCoin as they started by paying 2% a day and that only opened at the end of November (4 times as much as I ever invested in bitconnect but I still got all my investment back from them overall).
By the way, they obviously could always change terms for new loans instead of guaranteeing 0.25% at least for $10k plus forever but do you really think that is excessive? If you work it out it's less than 2.5 times the investment amount a year. I'm pretty sure people who hold bitcoin expect it to go up more than that each year, some speculating it will go up to a millions dollars! As already mentioned, the bitconnect model also gave value by guaranteeing the investment amount in USD so people could invest in cryptos without worrying about their portfolio going down in value (that doesn't even include the extra interest they also paid). Any sane person would prefer the bitconnect model than the bitcoin model. They shut down due to all the idiots saying they were a Ponzi.
No. It collapsed because it's a ponzi. You can't sustain a 0.25% daily rate and Bitconnect just proved that.
Look at the housing market and how many idiots also believe it always goes up. Bitconnect's model wouldn't have failed as there was no reason for the price not to go up all the time until something forced them to end it. Coin holders may have lost out in the end when the bubble burst but that's just the same as the current economy which goes in cycles of boom and bust. The difference is bitconnect would have had enough collateral to refund the guaranteed investments if they were allowed to run normally. Obviously all coin holders take the risk of a crash but the investments would have been easily guaranteed if it wasn't made to shut down
That's just mathematically impossible. Nothing can go up all the time. And Bitconnect is welcome to refund the investments, there is nothing that could prevent them from doing so if they have the funds. But you know very well they won't. They're still trying to rope people into their next scheme, which somehow is still going on despite the C&Ds.
