Get Started with BitCoin - Qoinpro

This is a continuation of the threat started in the Business News section ( http://repspace.com/forums/topic/1894/get-started-with-bitcoin/view/post_id/5043 ) about Getting Started with BitCoins - per the suggestion of the original author I went ahead and checked out the FAQ on QoinPro about their business model, hoping to find an anwer to my primary question: How can a company give something away ( BitCoins, TIPS, etc ) if there is no membership fee?

Right at the top of there FAQ is my rephrased question and their answer:

How do you make money and how can you give away coins for free?

We realize that our business model isn't immediately apparent if you look at the website right now. However, rest assured that we have a comprehensive business plan.

The primary objective of step one is to educate people about crypto-currencies and make it easy for people to get started. Simply sign-up, start receiving coins and learn more about bitcoin. In other words, "Educate and Facilitate". Step one was the multi-coin faucet where we give coins away for free every day. Step two was the launch of a complete multi-currency online wallet where you (will continue to) receive free coins every 24 hours.

In the coming weeks (and months) additional functionality will be added to the website that will provide us with the necessary revenue streams. Until that time (and after that) we're backed by private investors.

So back to the points I made in my earlier post - if your free account is credited with 0.4275749 "TIPS"  ( a form of cryptocurrency  like BitCoins ) and the cash value of each TIPS is .00000297 US Dollar per "TIPS" - yes, that's five zeros after the decimal point - then your daily deposit is worth about 2.97 *millionths* of a dollar. In every meaningful sense, it's worth nothing. You can't cash out a fraction of a penny, and it will take 2.97 million transactions for you personally to cash out a single penny.

They also offer to make deposits in other Cryptocurrencies, including the much more well known BitCoin - the daily BitCoin deposit is listed as   " 0.00000250" BitCoins for signup, and some unspecified amount to be added each day.  Actual cash value of this BitCoin Deposit?  Today one BitCoin ( 1 ) is worth 336.20 dollars. That means this deposit is worth 8.40 ten-thousandth's of a dollar. A slightly more generous proposition that the "TIPS" deposit, unless I slipped a decimal somewhere, but the same principle applies: This is a virtually worthless deposit. If every day QoinPro added the same amount to your account, and BitCoins stayed roughly the same value, it would take 10,000 deposits to make $8.00.  Or, 27 years of participation in the "Free" program to earn eight bucks.

So from a marketing perspective, this is a great lead generation ploy. You make absolutely worthless deposits into peoples accounts on a daily basis so they feel like they are actually getting something. .4275 TIPS looks slightly better than .0000000297 cents deposited into your account ( carry the decimal to convert from pennies to dollars ). As a company, you can essentially give out millions and millions of these TIPS or BitCoins fractions ( Satoris ) and never pay a penny. In fact, you could give out billions of TIPS theoretically, and as long as no one person has 297 million tips in their account, they can't ever cash it in for anything.

Let's really extrapolate how elegent a Qoinpro Scam or other cryptocurrency MLM scam could work - you could give everyone one million TIPS every day, for 296 days out of the year, and never pay a penny to anyone.

Then let's take the value of a customer email - based on most metrics, every customer in your email database has a potential value based on marketing materials and information you can send them. As long as it's opt in, you can send whatever you like. Even if your net response from all of your members averages out to is only .05 per member, per month if you hit 100,000 opt-ins all thinking they are getting something for nothing, that list is potentiall worth $5,000 just from sending offers. And since they are all people who were convinced once to test a "free" program, it's a far more valuable list indeed.

For me, this Qoinpro offer just seems incredibly and intentionally deceptive.

Add to that one of my ultimate red flags when evaluating a business, an out of the country company with no information on executives, and I just think this whole concept is a sleight-of-hand business effort to list build without offering any real product or service.