Not every bad person is a Nazi and not every scam is a Ponzi scheme. Most crypto scams are the equivalent of an old school pump and dump on a penny stock.
It’s not so entirely different though. Early investors in a pump and dump can make a tidy profit, just like early investors in a Ponzi.
The main difference is the lifecycle: the dump is fairly quick and sudden, as the name implies, while the Ponzi can keep digging a hole for decades if it can reach a sufficiently large or wealthy base of fresh investors.
Wow I’m surprised someone else noticed the parallel between the overuse of these two terms. I feel their meaning became very diluted because of it. They’re good examples of semantic satiation [0].
The main difference is the lifecycle: the dump is fairly quick and sudden, as the name implies, while the Ponzi can keep digging a hole for decades if it can reach a sufficiently large or wealthy base of fresh investors.