Honey and Money

And here is a new site I tried this week. It's called honey.

Honestly, it looks like a ponzi scheme. It advertises rates that are simply impossible to achieve over the long run. Anything that requires upfront bitcoin payment for an annuity is probably a scam.  There are many, many scams that look like this. Hash Ocean and Hash Profit are both examples that I reported on.  I am also leary of other sites like BCC or bitclubnetwork.

A few telltale signs of a Ponzi scheme is that the way they make money is either unclear, or very complicated. For example, Hash Profit claimed to have a fancy system of mining that picked the most profitable coins, but for some reason, they only did limited mining on weekends, which was strange. There also was no evidence they actually did any mining at all, which is a dangerous sign. Lastly, look at the rate of return, a 4% daily rate means that in one year, $1 turns into to over 1.5 million…  Which is simply not sustainable.  Even a Ponzi scheme likely will have payment proof; the scheme works for a few people, who tell more people, each group paying off the last. As long as more people come, it will work. But as soon as there is a slowdown, everything collapses, sites shut down, and people lose everything.

To contrast this, let's look at something that seems to not be a ponzi scheme, coinbase. Coinbase allows you to buy bitcoin with fiat, or visa versa. I personally don’t use the service, as it requires quite a bit of personal information . Regardless, they have a clear business strategy. They make money on the bitcoin spread, they sell bitcoin at one price, a higher price, and buy it at a lower price. So every time a trade is made, they make money.
In short, check out Honey if you want, but it doesn’t have all that much to do to earn Bitcoin so maybe give this one a pass. Make sure to check out my faucets for some better sources of crypto.