[piracykills]

> >6-7% annual returns

I wouldn't say quite that low, even S&P averages are often higher than that.

But 48% monthly is going to be something like a >1000% yearly interest rate. You really don't get much more of a dead giveaway than that, at that point you're either a fool or you're gambling and hoping you get out before a greater fool does.

[Carioca]

    >>> 100*1.48**12
    11044.360771961152

That's ELEVEN THOUSAND percent a year. 110x your money every year. That's enough to turn a dollar into 16 billion in 5 years.

[piracykills]

Yeah, I managed to miss a digit when I ran the numbers myself so I was off by an order of magnitude when I wrote my post. Glad you checked it. Fucking hilarious what these guys will say - of course, I think that's a goal, to shock anyone remotely reasonable or who even tries to do back of the envelope math out of interest in it.

[Aaron1011]

> That's enough to turn a dollar into 16 billion in 5 years.

I think it's actually 1.6 trillion

[kcanini]

It's actually 16 billion.

[ashleyn]

Willfully participating in a Ponzi scheme is a crime.

[alehul]

Rather than Ponzi scheme, I'd classify the investors as participating in a Pump & Dump.

A Ponzi scheme is when it's an investment vehicle (i.e. hedge fund) that provides returns to older investors through capital acquired from newer investors. In this case, by contrast, it's overhyping (to the point of fraud) a publicly traded security in hopes of rallying some investors to buy in, which increases the price, further validating the potential and convincing more investors to buy in.

Merely participating through buying in a Pump & Dump process is completely legal; it only becomes illegal if you're the party using fraudulent information to increase the value of the security.

[shkkmo]

> A Ponzi scheme is when it's an investment vehicle (i.e. hedge fund) that provides returns to older investors through capital acquired from newer investors.

Isn't that exactly what they did?

From the Article:

> Pincoin was particularly unique in that it offered bonuses for bringing other people into the program, a tactic that might sound familiar. The scammers paid out in cash until January when they began sending iFan tokens.

Pump and Dumps make their money by selling the asset once it's price has been inflated. In this case, the money was made throughout the whole ICO by fraudulently selling a security.

[alehul]

Offering bonuses for bringing other people into the program is a Pyramid Scheme tactic. Ponzi is specifically in cases where there's a portfolio manager or something controlling the entire operation and allocating returns to early investors through distributing the capital of the new investors.

[Buge]

That's what Pincoin did

>The company first ran the Pincoin ICO, promising constant returns to investors

>Investors have been told that they would enjoy a profit rate of 48 percent a month from their initial investment, and recoup all investments after four months.

[alehul]

Were they actually given that profit rate from the Pincoin team, or promised that the coin's value would increase?

This really seems like a mess of illegality either way haha.

[piracykills]

Are suspicions really enough to put you into illegal territory here?

If so it'd be a very hard crime to prosecute as unless you were working for them or something it's very hard to prove you aren't just another victim.

[alasdair_]

> Willfully participating in a Ponzi scheme is a crime.

Really? Which crime exactly?

Take something like this, for instance:

https://ponzischeme.io/

What is the crime?

[boomlinde]

Regarding your example, you're asking the wrong question. That's not a Ponzi scheme because it makes it clear what kind of returns to expect and that the returns simply come from other investors. A Ponzi scheme involves persuading investors to invest (and reinvest the returns) on a fraudulent basis.

What Charles Ponzi did, and what has come to characterize Ponzi schemes today, is fraud. He made investors think that they were investing in something tradable (stamp coupons) when he actually only ever paid the returns using other investors' money, and it was able to go on for so long because most people simply reinvested their returns on the basis that they thought it was a sustainable investment.

This dynamic doesn't exist without fraud. No one is going to invest in ponzischeme.io on any other basis than exactly what it is, betting to get in early and to cash in their returns before everyone else does.

That said, if I was the world dictator, the ponzischeme.io guys would be in a labor camp, where they would be forced to do meaningful work.