Amit Bhardwaj
Amit K. Bhardwaj (born January 17, 1983) is a fraudster from India. known as the founder-CEO of GB Miners.(who allegedly duped thousands of Indian citizens by hatching bitcoin-based Ponzi schemes). He also built India's first e-commerce website to accept Bitcoin as payment for products in 2013 called "highkart.com".[1]
Amit Bhardwaj | |
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Born | Amit K. Bhardwaj January 17, 1983 India |
Alma mater | Mahatma Gandhi Mission's College of Engineering and Technology |
Occupation | Bitcoin Miner, entrepreneur |
Known for | GB Miners and Amaze Mining and Research Limited |
Net worth | 1.86 billion dollars. |
He is also the founder of Amaze Mining and Research Limited from India.[2][3] Bhardwaj has been convicted of running a Multi-level marketing scheme in relation to the MCAP 'token' taken out by Gain Bitcoin.[4] Later, in April 2018, Gain Bitcoin was found to be one of the biggest Bitcoin scams.[5] He was arrested by team of Pune City Cyber Cell and was produced before a Special Court on 5 April 2018 where he was represented by Ronak Vankalas. So far, more than eight people have been arrested and all of them were associated with GainBitcoin and its CEO, cryptocurrency operative Amit Bhardwaj.[6] Amit was arrested along with his brothers and co-founders of GB Miners - Nikunj Jain [7]& Sahil Baghla for the US$300 Million cryptocurrency ponzi scheme.[8]
Education
Amit K.Bhardwaj, attended Kendriya Vidyalaya (1998 – 2000). He later graduated from Mahatma Gandhi Mission's College of Engineering and Technology, Nanded, Maharashtra (2000 – 2004) with a Btech degree in Computer Science and engineering
Career
In 2016, Amit founded Amaze Mining & Blockchain Research Ltd, an Alt-coin Mining Technology firm.[9] He founded GBMiners, an Indian Bitcoin Mining Pool in 2016, which was later found to be a Scam website.[10] He also founded CoinBank, a Safe Bitcoin Wallet. which was later found to be a fraud company as you See.. Coinbank is different from coinbase.. They have named it coinbank just to resemble a genuine website.[11] He has invested in several industries and companies among them include Airbitz, Alpha Point, Air Selfie, Rock Miner and 1Hash.[12]
Gainbitcoin and GBMiners
In a series of interviews Bhardwaj gave to The Caravan in 2017, he first claimed to not have any part in Gainbitcoin and that he knew of it only as a cloud-mining company, but later argued that he hid his involvement as a "PR strategy". He also misrepresented total investment in Gainbitcoin and admitted to inflating the figure on the company's website. Bhardwaj also denied any links between Gainbitcoin and GBMiners, though many of the former's investors believed the latter to be the mine-pool.[13]
References
- Bahirwani, Krishna (2014-02-05). "India's first e-Commerce store to accept Bitcoin only as a payment method". DNA India. Retrieved 2020-10-17.
- "Crypto currency guru Amit Bhardwaj launches e-book", thehindubusinessline.com
- Nimish Sawant, "Bitcoins accepted by over 500 merchants in India, says GBminers co-founder Amit Bhardwaj", tech.firstpost.com, December 19, 2016
- "Amit Bhardwaj next wants to take his cryptocurrency MLM scheme international | FactorDaily". FactorDaily. 2018-01-23. Retrieved 2018-03-08.
- https://www.hindustantimes.com/pune-news/8-arrested-as-pune-police-unplug-multi-level-marketing-bitcoin-fraud/story-e3Rg02cZLoqjjyBQxJV9CM.html
- http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/other-states/bitcoin-fraud-unearthed-in-pune-8-held/article23437801.ece
- "Bloomberg profile - Nikunj Jain". Bloomberg. Archived from the original on 2018-06-15.
- Khatri, Bhumika. "Two Startup Founders Arrested In Connection With Amit Bhardwaj's $300 Mn Cryptocurrency Ponzi Scheme". Inc42.
- "Amit Bhardwaj explains the Bitcoin market", businesszone.co.uk,.
- "Cracks appear in Bitcoin Ponzi king Amit Bhardwaj's empire". FactorDaily. 2017-11-06. Retrieved 2020-10-13.
- http://www.crypto-news.in/news/indian-cryptocurrency-scamster-amit-bharadwaj-finally-nabbed-bangkok-police/
- "'I am Aggressively Looking to Invest in Blockchain Startups' - Amit Bhardwaj, Founder, GBMiners", bwdisrupt.businessworld.in,.
- Thaker, Aria. "Promise and peril in the Indian bitcoin economy". The Caravan. Retrieved 2019-07-15.