Do I think Satoshi intended to set up a ponzi scheme? Punt on this question. It requires me reading his mind and making judgments about sincerity of purpose.

Do I think Satoshi intended to set up a ponzi scheme? Punt on this question. It requires me reading his mind and making judgments about sincerity of purpose. Do I think Satoshi knew what he was doing with regards to incentive compatibility of making tokens widely distributed and essentially free early with the implicit promise of them being highly valuable later if adoption occurred? Yes, absolutely. He told people that that was the plan. He asked them to avoid actions (such as GPU-compatible mining applications) which he was worried would kill the goldrush phase before it had attracted sufficient cryptocurrency evangelists to gain traction [+]. Should any evil person use a ponzi scheme when Satoshi schemes are now a technology which exist? Surely not. Satoshi schemes strictly dominate ponzi schemes. [+] https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=12.msg54#msg54 https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=12.msg54#msg54