Bitcoin Trader was an obvious ponzi scheme which inevitably disappeared with all the bitcoin invested by customers. The scheme marketed itself as one that could deliver a passive income on auto pilot to customers by taking advantage of arbitrage opportunities in the market, returning profits to customers after a 120 day period. Where some people see numerous red flags, others see opportunity!

Launched by someone calling themselves John Carley, the ponzi claimed to have been available to private investors in late 2013 before opening to the public earlier this year. Carley's partners included Michael Brandenburg, who worked in advertising the scheme and assisting the technical team while Thomas Opperman was the PR manager as well as Michael Brandeburg's assistant.

To cut a long and somewhat obvious story short, after almost a year, the people who believed they were making money demanded an audit, perhaps because some knew the scheme was too good to be true. John Carley, who at first opposed it, went on to claim the company was a victim of hackers during said audit.

“While preparing for the final audit results, a task we were working on for weeks now, our bitcoin wallet has been hacked and emptied, just after exchanging our fiat holdings within the exchanges to bitcoin and transferring our entire holdings to our wallet, in order to proof our solvency. It is a known fact that I personally opposed any proof of solvency, but agreed to conduct it for the sake of a few dozen small and medium investors.”

The ponzi immediately imploded, the website and John Carley disappeared. His name is likely an alias, unlike the respected members of the community who helped to market the ponzi to the greedy victims.

Caleb Chen, editor of scam site CryptoCoinsNews, pumped the ponzi back in February this year and while his article has since been removed, archive.org maintains a copy.

Stephanie Murphy of Let's Talk Bitcoin and her partner in crime Brian Sovryn provided the voice overs used as part of the marketing campaign. The prophetic video makes it clear what will become of Bitcoin Trader.

Stephanie Murphy, a voice over artist, claimed on a recent episode of Let's Talk Bitcoin that she was privy to the script for Paypal's latest advertisement but since it gave her pause as to whether it was legitimate or not, she did not apply for the job. Clearly it was full steam ahead for her and Bitcoin Trader. Of course, it's nothing new for LTB hosts to lend what little credibility they have to promote scams, Andreas M. Antonopoulos having lent his to assist NEOBEE with their scheme.

Mark Edge, who contributes to Free Talk Live, also features heavily in the advertisement for the ponzi scheme.

The 4 individuals above will cry that they too are victims of the scam but each one walks away from the ponzi with a small profit for their contribution as shills.