Founded in 2018 by Cornelius Johannes Steynberg, Mirror Trading International (MTI) was a South African cryptocurrency investment platform that was going to turn many into millionaires.
How was this going to happen? The South African company launched a "trading bot" that will help people trade their #bitcoin
At the end of each month, each user will get a guaranteed 10% interest on their investment. It sounded great to many, and they had a lot of investors. Just two years later, over 23,000 people have signed up and made deposits on the platform. Total deposits amounted to 29,421 $BTC
The Problems With Mirror Trading International (MTI)
The platform was being advertised as the next big thing. The founder was living a very expensive lifestyle; traveling from place to place and buying every new thing he wanted.
Many wanted to live the dream, and continued investing. But there was a major problem.
Apparently, there was no trading bot. The founder simply collected new money and paid old customers plus 10%. Yup, a classic Ponzi scheme.
He ran this model for a while until it was no longer sustainable. By December of 2020, the Ponzi collapsed, and Steynberg fled
Hope For Investors
Unlike some of the other big scams, like One Coin, investors have hope of getting their money back. After three years of investigation, the US CFTC came to the conclusion that there was no trading bots being used.
They also found out that only a small portion of these funds were ever invested in Bitcoin. The rest of the money was used to pay returns to earlier investors, as well as to fund Steynberg's lavish lifestyle.
In September 2023, a US court ordered MTI to pay $1.7 billion in restitution to its victims. The court also ordered Steynberg to pay $1.7 billion in restitution and a civil monetary penalty of the same amount.
The Lessons For Us
This is another example in how Ponzi schemes usually end up. Ponzi schemes are fraudulent investment schemes that pay returns to investors from their own money or the money paid by subsequent investors, rather than from profits earned through legitimate investment activity. Ponzi schemes are often disguised as legitimate investment opportunities and can be very difficult to detect.
What can we learn?
If you are not sure where the yield is coming from, you are the yield
Stay away from teams and projects that make promises of riches when you invest in their projects
If you notice any red flags, don't ignore them, no matter how small your investment is.
I shared tis so you and others around you can learn about what happened, and also avoid it. So, do well to share it with friends.
If you haven't, do well to follow me. #Admiano
