Random PSA/infodump just because I'm reminded that people don't know these things and still think cryptocurrency is investment fraud (notably people calling it a ponzi scheme).

First, to be clear: crypto sucks, but it is not investment fraud. It's an entirely legitimate investment, just a risky one (all investment is gambling).

The biggest problem I have with people calling it a Ponzi Scheme is that it's confusing people on what a Ponzi Scheme is. So here's a short intro to the two big types of investment schemes:

- Ponzi Scheme: These schemes typically look like entirely normal investment opportunities that some person or organization is offering you. The notable aspects that are required for a Ponzi Scheme are that you're being promised returns on your investment (not you buying and selling investments, but just making the investment once and getting routine payouts) and that they are continually looking for new investors (no set amount of money they're trying to raise).

Part of what makes these schemes especially deceptive is that they're often started accidentally. The basic structure of these is that whomever you are investing with is not actually investing in the way they're telling you, they're taking the money you gave them to pay the returns of earlier investors in the scheme.

- Pyramid Scheme: These schemes are always intentional frauds and are painfully obvious to anyone who knows what a pyramid scheme is (they survive because of how many people don't know what pyramid schemes are and the sheer amount of manpower they have to spread the fraud).

The basic structure of a pyramid scheme is that, unless you are one of the original investors, you are not investing directly in the organization. Instead you will always be investing through other people under the promise that you'll make money by convincing other people to invest through you. They spread aggressively because you're incentivized to put pressure on everyone below you in the pyramid to spread it as aggressively as possible.

MLM's (Multi-Level Marketing) are a type of pyramid scheme in which your "investment" is buying materials to sell on their behalf. Notable in comparison to legitimate work, there will be no controls to limit competition in the area (meaning each added person you didn't bring in yourself is cutting into your ability to sell product) and you will be expected to "buy in" through another "investor" rather than with the company itself directly.
Notably, these fail because there's a practical limit to how many people you can add and once you stop adding people the revenue dries up.