Thanks everyone for all of this good information. I went to a meetup about Bitcoin this afternoon and it turned into a BitClub Network pitch.
Most everything sounded very plausible (except the slide which claimed that the power cooling costs would be $0 because "hydro and geothermal" and "It's in Iceland", which I made a point of to the meeting organizer). In fact, the organizer was very low key overall and didn't even hard sell the MLM side of things - we actually had to ask her to explain it to us.
Bottom line.. I was really sold and had her create an account for me, with a plan to go home and do some research on this before I invested. However, she then told everyone we had to download the Opera browser for it to work. That seemed very odd. I've never used Opera on a PC before. But, okay. When I asked why, she told us it that Bitcoin Club was being "smart" - since "everything you do is watched by the US government, even your internet activity", Bitcoin Club is blocking IP addresses in the US and Opera has a built-in VPN. Ah, sure, whatever... but then were told not only did we have to use a VPN, but we also had to set it to Canada or Europe, that way we could join, otherwise, we'd get a "warning" about no longer accepting U.S. investors because of SEC regulations, etc. HUGE RED FLAG!
However, I actually went through all of these "warnings" on the website (one "warning" was that they would refund ALL of my money if they found out I was in the US - not really that scary) and was still able to log in to the site. But doing a quick Google search lead me to this forum and several other websites which have confirmed my suspicions that the reason they stopped wanting U.S. investors is because they are selling unregistered securities, and, more importantly, they aren't able to sustain payouts to investors without money from new investors, which makes it a classic MLM pyramid scheme.
So, thanks for the all of the warnings about giving away my precious Bitcoin to something like this, and even more importantly, keeping me from roping my friends and coworkers into something that won't last. Unless I get some additional information and clarification on the math that show it's more than a total scam - I'll update everyone here if it does and ask for feedback - I will be sitting this one out!
Quoting for our latest fanboy, Devonbuy....
