The New Meaning of Ponzi
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*Financial Times* columnist [Jemima Kelly](https://ift.tt/3zGB0Ez), fronting deep disapproval both for Bitcoin and the “cringe worthy”, much-commented-on [Matt Damon crypto ad](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hBC5TVdYT8), wrote today:
>There also seems to be a growing recognition that the crypto market is similar to a Ponzi or pyramid scheme. So widely has this idea now spread that crypto types have even begun defending the idea of these schemes. “Join a pyramid. It’s not a bubble unless it bursts,” one crypto blogger wrote last month in a post named “[In praise of Ponzis](https://ift.tt/3tbHytu
That blogger wrote:
>What if there was a way to pay millions of people to watch a specific video at a specific moment in order to ensure that video goes viral and makes enough money to cover the cost of paying all these people — and then some?
>
>In the old world, this would be too complicated. Just getting everyone’s bank details would take forever. But in *our* world, it is possible. It takes about five minutes to set up a smart contract that . . . [would] pay these people automatically once they complete a certain action online — and to pay them again when their actions bear fruit and drive up the value of a song/product/stock/anything.
>
>This is, essentially, a pyramid scheme. A Ponzi. But it makes sense. It will be *the* dominant marketing method of the next decade and beyond.
No it won’t, and as most readers of this subreddit know, such a procedure would not be a Ponzi either, that being properly defined by Merriam Webster as *an investment swindle in which some early investors are paid off with money put up by later ones in order to encourage more and bigger risks.*
Doesn’t really sound like automatically emitting crypto micro-payment to watch a video — nor does it sound like Bitcoin either, for that matter. (Sounds more like a perfectly legal stock-option deal when you think about it.) What seems to be happening is that terms like *Ponzi* and *pyramid* are increasingly being used generically for *scam.*
Which is itself a scam and Confucius, who wrote that *The beginning of wisdom is to* *call* *things* *by* *their* *proper* *name*, would have spotted it.
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Cryptocurrency
