The Monday February 5th Edition of The Cryptocurrency Novice Report

At first, spotting a Bitconnect clone was easy, look for an ICO that claimed you could make outrageous profit by simply buying their coin and the lending it to others. They always had a private exchange and an "affiliate" program to go with it. Of course, this was the triple threat of a Ponzi scheme.

1. Lending for big profits to lure people in.
2. Private exchange, because no real exchange would host this trash.
3. Affiliate program to pay the shills to hawk this garbage and make it look legit.

But now that the word is out about Bitconnect, the clones are starting to change their tune a little bit to try and throw people off their scent.

Word to the Wise

Today's Word to the Wise scam is another Bitconnect clone, FineCoin.

Now that Bitconnect and several of it's clones have imploded, FineCoin is in the difficult position of being a Bitconnect clone right in the middle if it's ICO. What to do, what to do... take the money and run? Or, restructure and try to continue ripping people off, erm , I mean, soliciting investors. FineCoin solves that problem by changing from "Lending" to "Staking".

Of course to be a successful Ponzi scheme you need a lot of willing shills, I mean affiliates, to bring the lambs to slaughter. But most shills are too smart to risk their own money. FineCoin solves that problem by promising shills big rewards and they don't even need to risk their own money.

All quality ICOs publicize their team, location and other vital information so that you know they are trustworthy. FineCoin solves that sticky issue by promising to publicize all that information sometime after you give them your money. Because you can trust them. After all, who wouldn't trust some unknown person, right?

As you can see, there are far too many similarities between FineCoin and Bitconnect and it's numerous clones. One little tweak does not make FineCoin suddenly legit. If someone tries to sell you on this garbage, RUN FOR THE HILLS! Because you know it's a scam.

Money For Nothing

Today's free money is a simple mining solution for those who don't want to spend hundreds or thousands of dollars on a Graphics card or ASIC mining rig. If you have a computer, no matter how old or slow, you have a CPU. Which means you can still mine cryptocurrency with your CPU. Now you won't be able to mine Bitcoin or Ethereum or any other of the many coins that are mined by expensive equipment, but there are still a few coins out there that can only be mined by CPUs. One of them is VeriumReserve (VRM).

To mine VRM with your CPU, you first need to join a pool. There are a few pools you can mine VRM on, but one is made specifically for miners with more basic, slower CPUs. Go to https://vrm2.poolinat0r.com/index.php and click the Help icon on the left side of the screen and select Getting Started to, well, get started. Follow the instructions to create a pool account, download and configure the cpuminer for your OS and get started mining VRM.

I personally have been using mining VRM at this pool for several months. It's safe to use and I have received payments without delay. And best of all, except for the small cost of electricity to run my CPU, it's completely FREE!

The Report

The continuing saga of the great cryptocurrency correction continues. Actually, this is the second great correction. The first one occurred in 2014/2015. The first one was much worse, when Bitcoin dropped over 80% off of it's high. Where we will end up from here no one knows, but I do know this, some of the saddest people I talked to last year were the ones who bought Bitcoin in 2014 near the high and sold out in 2015 near the low.

Bitcoin continued to fall throughout most of the weekend and hit a low of just under $6800 less than an hour ago. Since then it has bounced up a little and is currently trading at $7338, down just over 10% since this time yesterday and a whopping 35% in the last week.

Like the rest of the cryptocurrency market, Steem and SBD are both down pretty big also. Steem is currently trading at $3.52, down almost 8% in the last 24 hours and 40% since this time last week.

SBD currently trading at $2.99, down over 11% since yesterday and just over 55% since last Monday afternoon.

On a cheerier note, the supply of liquid Steem dropped a little over the weekend. There was a net powering up of about 150,000 Steem the last couple days as people are deciding to hold on to their Steem or acquire new and put it to work.

Please note: I am not an investment professional. The information I present here is only my opinion. There are a lot of Bitconnect shills out there, fortunately it looks like Steemit will be plagued with one less in the future. Hurray!

Until next time...

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