Hey Hey Hey is a crypto meme taken from a speech by Carlos Matos, a New York investor who addressed BitConnect's annual event in Pattaya, Thailand, in late 2017. He opened with a shouted "Hey hey hey!", told the crowd how much his investment had grown, and finished by yelling "BitConnect!" again and again. Video of the speech spread online within weeks.
The meme now works as shorthand for blind enthusiasm about an investment that is too good to be true. Its edge comes from what happened next: BitConnect shut its lending program in January 2018, its token collapsed, and US authorities later described the business as a Ponzi scheme that took about $2 billion from investors worldwide. Matos was an investor, not an executive, and no charges against him have been reported.
Hey Hey Hey in plain terms
Imagine a wedding guest who grabs the microphone and shouts, with total conviction, that a friend's scheme has made him rich and everybody should join. The room cheers. A few months later the scheme falls apart and most guests lose money. The recording of that speech becomes a joke people replay whenever someone gets too excited about easy money.
That is how "Hey hey hey" is used. Posting the clip or the phrase under a new project is a warning wrapped in a joke: the excitement looks familiar, and the last time it ended badly.
What BitConnect promised
BitConnect ran a "Lending Program". Investors bought the platform's own token, BitConnect Coin (BCC), usually with bitcoin, and then "lent" it back to the platform. In return BitConnect promised daily interest, claiming the money was traded by a proprietary "volatility software trading bot", the kind of tool described under crypto trading bots. It also paid commissions to promoters who signed up new investors, a structure with features of multi-level marketing.
According to the US Securities and Exchange Commission, the trading bot was a cover story: rather than trading, BitConnect and its founder moved investors' money to wallets they controlled. Promised returns that did not depend on real profits are the defining sign of a Ponzi scheme, and the referral rewards added the recruitment element seen in a pyramid scheme. The page on high yield investment program fraud describes the same pattern.
Collapse and enforcement
- January 2018: state orders. The Texas State Securities Board and the North Carolina Securities Division issued emergency cease-and-desist orders, saying BitConnect was offering unregistered securities.
- 16 January 2018: shutdown. BitConnect announced it was closing the lending program and its exchange, blaming bad press, the state orders and DDoS attacks. The BCC token lost more than 90% of its value within days.
- September 2021: SEC complaint. The SEC sued BitConnect, founder Satish Kumbhani and top US promoter Glenn Arcaro, alleging a $2 billion fraudulent and unregistered offering run from early 2017 to January 2018. Arcaro pleaded guilty to criminal charges the same day.
- 25 February 2022: indictment. A federal grand jury in San Diego indicted Kumbhani on charges including wire fraud, commodity price manipulation, operating an unlicensed money transmitting business and international money laundering. The Justice Department put investor losses at about $2.4 billion. Kumbhani was not in US custody when the indictment was announced.
The case is a reference point for later crypto enforcement because the SEC treated the lending program as a security under the Howey Test.
Why the meme lasted
The speech captured, in one clip, the mood of the 2017 boom: the ICO rush, the fear of missing out and the paid promoters who shilled products on YouTube. Many of the warning signs listed under identifying cryptocurrency scams were visible at BitConnect, including guaranteed daily returns, a secret trading method and heavy rewards for recruiting. The clip is now reused whenever an influencer or project promises returns that sound similar, alongside memes such as Money Printer Go Brrr and When Lambo.