[blunte]

Agreed, a ponzi is just another scheme (where scheme doesn't have to be a negative word). The gamble with a ponzi is whether the person entering the scheme is the last person or not. If not last, they make make money. If to far at the bottom (too near the end, when not enough new people join to continue funding the process), then they lose.

There are people who make a living "playing ponzis", estimating which ponzis will be big, how long they'll last, and when to enter and exit.

What does make ponzis particularly bad is that they are almost always promoted as something else - some kind of magical investment (and now using tech terms that are either nonsensical or will otherwise confuse their potential investors). That is the fraud aspect, and is no different than promoting some investment fund as being typical while privately just deciding who to pay dividends to.

If you bought a McDonalds franchise, and the next day the world decided that fast food made them fat and ceased buying it, you would experience the same outcome as if you had joined a very expensive ponzi. But you know that going into it, and you believe that is not a likely outcome. With a ponzi, unless you know who's operating it and how good the promotion is, you're going to have a much harder time determining entry and exit timings. (I don't recommend playing at all!)