“Double-your-Bitcoin” website goes viral but smells like a Ponzi scheme

By Tim Copeland

Doubly is the latest high-yield investment program and has raised more than a few eyebrows. It offers a 300 percent return within 54 days—funds are paid out daily—and a 15 percent commission for every new person introduced. AND it claims your funds are insured.

If that's not a warning sign then there's the fact that the platform revolves around an unspecified trading bot which, supposedly, brings in those profitable returns. Doubly also implies, on its website, that it’s partnered with three crypto exchanges—Huobi, Bitfinex and Bittrex—but Huobi has confirmed to Decrypt that it is not in partnership with Doubly. The other two are yet to respond. As if that’s not enough, the website provides a complete marketing kit for spreading referral links.

We have reached out to Doubly for comment and will update this article if we hear back.

But despite all these danger signs, interest in Doubly is spreading like wildfire. Will it be stopped before it reaches the scale of notorious Ponzi scheme Bitconnect?

The Doubly promise is fairly straightforward to grasp: Simply put in a certain amount of money and receive daily payouts that double—or even triple—the original buy in within less than two months. As you might expect, you receive a better rate of return the more money you put in. Doubly accepts payments in Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, Bitcoin Cash and Dash.

Doubly claims to double your Bitcoin. It just doesn't explain how. Photo Credit: Doubly

For those that are referred, the program also pays out 15 percent commission. Five percent is paid out immediately and 0.5 percent is paid daily for the next 20 days. And, to help users out, the marketing kit has images, logos and even a full slide deck in three different languages. The information there reveals that Doubly has “17 experts,” none of whom are mentioned on its website.

Doubly even has a competition page, which takes referral links to the next level. Essentially, there are expensive prizes for whoever can sign the most people up, generating maximum awareness for the scheme.

Unsurprisingly, Doubly has been getting noticed. Although it’s been around since March 2018, it’s recently gained more attention as crypto news outlets NewsBTC, CCN and AMBcrypto, have all published sponsored news content on its behalf. It has 5,900 followers on Instagram, 7,300 on Facebook and 12,000 members across its two Telegram chats.

All this means that it could be spreading as fast as Bitconnect, a well-known crypto Ponzi scheme which had its own cryptocurrency and was valued at $1.5 billion before it collapsed. While Doubly has some way to go before it achieves the same fanfare, its aggressive marketing tactics mean that it may soon be on its way—unless it’s nipped in the bud. But is it already be too late? One Bitcoin address associated with the exchange has received 960 Bitcoin ($3.8 million) to date. However, it’s impossible to tell how much of this is from punters and whether the money has been attributed more than once.

So, are there any genuine aspects to it? The Telegram channel does appear to be posting winnings, although it can’t be verified that these have been paid out. In the case of Bitconnect, money was paid out until the scheme collapsed.

And don’t be fooled by the “proof” that it’s a verified company, with a record at Companies House, the UK’s company accounts registrar. This only means that a statement of incorporation has been uploaded—not that Companies House has verified any information.

Doubly also says that it has partnered with Financial Global Insurance Solution Limited (FGI) so that all funds are insured and can be paid back if they are deemed missing. It even has a vaguely worded contract between the two companies. Great, except that, apart from records showing that FGI was incorporated as recently as December, 2018, there doesn’t appear to be any other trace of it.

So, do this benevolent CEO and team of experts just want to double your money, or is this a classic Ponzi scheme based around high expectations of profits and aggressive referral links? You decide.

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