Investors are believed to have lost more than $10 million in the alleged cryptocurrency Ponzi scheme called Bitstream Circle, Bitcoin.com reported. The scam became obvious on March 13, 2022, when some of the investors in the scheme reported having issues making withdrawals.
They were warned
A platform called Techspace Africa had warned Kenyans about Bitstream Circle. Before it emerged as a Ponzi scheme, they referred to it as “yet another elaborate scheme targeting young people looking to get into the cryptocurrency scene.” The platform wrote in a blog post on March 14:
As expected, we received major backlash from ‘investors’ who called it legit, however, these same Kenyans will wake up to a collapsed Ponzi Scheme today.
Scheme accumulated 11K members in 4 months
One report maintains that the alleged Ponzi scheme was registered in November 2021 in the U.K. Its name was Bitstream Circle Limited. The director was listed as one Quin Yang, a national of China. The report adds that more than 11,000 people signed up in less than four months. They came from a total of seven countries.
Apparently, most victims were lured by the promise of a daily ROI in the range of 5%-8%.
$120M lost to similar scams in one year in Kenya
Recently, a Kenyan government official reported Kenyans had lost $120 million to crypto scams in the past fiscal year. This failed to deter Bitstream Circle’s early investors, who wrote these allegations off at first.
The first signs of the scam
Many investors…
