On Thursday, September 3rd, the Neucoin team refunded my 0.1BTC in this transaction (address: 1phmMcubFy298wujNFj6hQ1gctUBFovmL). They also said they are still going to honor my purchase. The story remains factual and error-free, thus it will stay here for posterity. Thanks to Sandrine @ Neucoin for attending to the matter for me, months after it first occurred as it were.
In this story I don't lose that much money. I only lost twice as much as I wanted to lose by investing in the first place.
Many cryptocurrencies besides Bitcoin or Litecoin are simply bad ideas pressed on by a lot of money. I had thought Neucoin would be a bit different, given all the reputable people who'd put their weight behind it. At the time, I was still working for CCN, and so I was being paid in Bitcoin. Before I go much further, let me get to the facts of the case:
1. On April 29th, 2015, after writing an assignment about Neucoin, I decided to look further into it. I have a family, so I'm not willy nilly with my money for the most part. I will admit I've played too many gambling games with Bitcoin, but overall I think I'm ahead. Maybe. Maybe not. But at least with those, you know you're running the risk of losing your money.
2. Same day, I decided to go through with it, and ordered from the pre-sale. I do not recall seeing anywhere on the page that there was a minimum deposit. I sent a Bit-nickel, 0.05, figuring that'd be a decent number of coins if the thing took off. I think it was over 1000.
3. The next page said that 0.05 wasn't enough. I sent another 0.05, for a total of .1. Then the page just hung, and hung, and hung. I may have those links backward. Either way, both transactions were in the same block (#354228).
No big deal, I thought. Just contact their support staff, get it straightened out. I figured I needed some kind of confirmation code to collect my coins when they were released. But this is what's happened so far:
As you can see, I've inquired several times. Then, more recently, after someone mentioned them here on ZapChain, I decided it was time to go public with this nonsense.
Now, you may say: .1 is nothing. It was like $27 at the time! Why is this guy complaining?
I'm inclined to agree. This is not a lot of money. I think I'm lucky in that regard alone. Here's the thing, though: if you're married, you understand that taking gambles like this affects your spouse as well. You like to keep them in the loop. What do you think my wife thinks of Neucoin? Well, at this point I agree with her: straight up scam.
Discuss! Was Neucoin the most brilliant scam of the last year or so?