[adam_arthur]

Not true.

If I buy a stock or a bond, I get the dividend payment regardless of when I get in. It doesn't require you to be early, just to accept what the current value proposition is.

You'll make more money if you time it right, but you get some intrinsic value from it even if no future investors ever come along.

Or more obviously, buying rental property. Cap rates change over time, but you always get some real return.

And "pump and dump" implies a coordinated scheme. Usually they'll create groups/networks and call for everybody to buy in. But they tend to frontrun the group. We can call that something other than Ponzi, but at the end of the day, the later buyers are paying off the earlier buyers, and it's zero sum.. the underlying relationship is the same