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Show HN: PonziCoin, a transparent, decentralized Ponzi Scheme you can trust
- gruez 9y ago>The World's First Legitimate Ponzi Scheme I'm pretty sure this was done before. As a dapp even.
- Nummeros 9y agoYup. For example here: https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/3g6ccj/these_are_the_first_ever_verifiable_pyramid/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/3g6ccj/these_are_...
- 45h34jh53k4j 9y agoIt also got hacked because the contract was broken. Its fine -- those that do not learn the histories of the past are doomed to repeat them
- Nummeros 9y agoHuh? How was it hacked?
- stcredzero 9y agoIt's been happening on Eve Online since over a decade ago. Those are Ponzi schemes, and they are not illegal.
- gruez 9y agoaren't all ponzi schemes illegal, regardless of whether they're disclosed or not?
- stcredzero 9y agoThe Ponzi schemes on Eve Online only pay out ISK, which is an in-game currency. Is that illegal? ISK is basically pegged to real-world currency through the sale of game-time codes.
- badosu 9y agoI wonder if there's liability for the author when people get damaged by this
- geoffreyy 9y ago> Q: Is this site secure? > A: We use Equifax-grade security. haha
- frinxor 9y agoBeat me to it :)
- mtgx 9y agoGovernment-grade security would've worked just as well, but probably most people wouldn't get that joke.
- master_ant 9y agolooks at url not https Figures.
- saalweachter 9y agoI am not a lawyer, but my gut says that a hilarious, tongue-in-cheek financial crime is still a financial crime. Any lawyers want to weigh in on whether you have some sort of first-amendment right to parody crimes?
- sushid 9y agoNot a lawyer either but I don't think you can if you are operating an actual Ponzi scheme, transparent or not.
- dragonwriter 9y agoA Ponzi scheme cannot be transparent; if it's transparent, it's probably a pyramid scheme. A Ponzi is something where the victims are duped into believing there is something else being invested in, while early entrants are paid with funds from later entrants; a pyramid scheme is where the early entrants know their money comes from later entrants (and usually, though this isn't critical, are actively involved in recruiting.)
- BLanen 9y agoI remember this too.
- conanbatt 9y ago> parody crimes Superb concept.
- fixermark 9y ago"I'm stealing all your stuff. But ironically."
- stcredzero 9y agohttps://www.joeyskaggs.com/html/cat.html https://www.joeyskaggs.com/html/cat.html
- 9y ago
- frinxor 9y agoThis is fantastic. Cant lose more than 75%? I'm in
- samfriedman 9y agoHey, you can only lose up to 100%, right? As long as this thing shoots up at least 101% you're guaranteed profits!
- sushid 9y agoYou can lose more than 75%. If there's no ETH in the wallet they can't pay you back out.
- vertoc 9y agoI made a spreadsheet to figure this out and the reason I dont mention that risk more is that is only at risk of happening after around 900 tokens are sold - until then the contract will always enough ETH. If 900 tokens are sold, the contract will have over $100k worth of ETH which I really hope never happens.
- rocelot 9y agoWell that escalated quickly
- phyller 9y agoIt could be emptied out after 400 coins, not 900. If there is already money in there it would take a little more, not much. Unless my math is wrong. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16226641 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16226641 Reproduced here with more columns, assuming initial price of .02 ETH per coin: +----------+----------+-----------+------------+-------------+ | numCoins | coinCost | coinValue | sell price | Profit/Loss | +----------+----------+-----------+------------+-------------+ | 100 | 2 | 0.01 | 1 | -1 | | 200 | 6 | 0.02 | 4 | -2 | | 300 | 14 | 0.04 | 12 | -2 | | 400 | 30 | 0.08 | 32 | 2 | | 500 | 62 | 0.16 | 80 | 18 | | 600 | 126 | 0.32 | 192 | 66 | | 700 | 254 | 0.64 | 448 | 194 | | 800 | 510 | 1.28 | 1024 | 514 | | 900 | 1022 | 2.56 | 2304 | 1282 | | 1000 | 2046 | 5.12 | 5120 | 3074 | +----------+----------+-----------+------------+-------------+ Also the guy said he has 200 coins to use whenever he wants
- iaw 9y ago> We suggest shilling this coin heavily to your family and friends like a fucking sociopath. That line made my day.
- fictionfuture 9y agoSEC as the symbol was my favorite part:
- toddkazakov 9y agoThe white paper is great
- BLanen 9y agoThis isn't the first. Not by a long shot. I remember these 'transpararent ponzis' from years ago.
- econner 9y agoYea, ponzi.io was one. Screenshot from 2014: https://web.archive.org/web/20140208200431/http://ponzi.io/ https://web.archive.org/web/20140208200431/http://ponzi.io/
- finnh 9y agoyup. this was a great whitepaper: https://ponzico.win https://ponzico.win
- zerostar07 9y agoHow could they run a Ponzi scheme and lie about it being the first or sth. Outrage!
- cobookman 9y agoThis was done with Ponzi.io a while back. Founder shut it down as they were afraid of breaking laws.
- Nummeros 9y agoThere are ponzis on Ethereum that are impossible to shut down
- Retric 9y agoDifficult not impossible, killing Ethereum is one option.
- rthomas6 9y agoAnd how would one go about killing Ethereum?
- wmf 9y agoUnfortunate Lambo accident?
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- JumpCrisscross 9y ago> how would one go about killing Ethereum? Arrest founders, freeze exchanges and seize their ether or cash proceeds of ether sales recently completed. Subpoena their records and trace ownership to natural persons; if they don’t surrender their ether or pay a fine they go to jail. Trace IP addresses to scare a few more people; rinse and repeat periodically. Bonus points if you do it only for ether, thereby giving people an exit to other cryptocurrencies and allow people to voluntarily surrender ether for a token, capped tax write-off. The U.S. government has lots of experience thoughtlessly banning things in an overreaction, and with limited exceptions (e.g. the war on drugs) it’s more or less worked.
- 9y ago
- atentaten 9y agoAwesome! Just bought 100K worth.
- slimshady94 9y agoCan you see how many tokens have been bought till now?
- terhechte 9y agohttps://etherscan.io/address/0xe3f64dc522a66405c51d96aae234217a03502bb4#readContract https://etherscan.io/address/0xe3f64dc522a66405c51d96aae2342... There's $9,047.32 worth of ETH in the contract already. Price seems to be 0.08 ETH
- kgwgk 9y agoWarning: this is a scam. The real one is at https://ponzico.win https://ponzico.win
- thrillgore 9y agoFinally, an honest pump and dump ICO for me!
- stcredzero 9y agoPumpNDumpCoin?
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- aakilfernandes 9y agoThat logo is fantastic
- lpage 9y agoThis has seen ~$10,600USD worth of love so far [1]. The contract source is comedy gold [2]. [1] https://etherscan.io/address/0xe3f64dc522a66405c51d96aae234217a03502bb4#transactions https://etherscan.io/address/0xe3f64dc522a66405c51d96aae2342... - accessed at Wed Jan 24 16:10:39 EST 2018 [2] https://etherscan.io/address/0xe3f64dc522a66405c51d96aae234217a03502bb4#code https://etherscan.io/address/0xe3f64dc522a66405c51d96aae2342...
- guiomie 9y agoIs this a well coded contract? Also, how come is the source code available? I thought only bytcodes were pushed to the EVM ?
- lpage 9y agoEtherscan has an option for linking the source [1], in which case they compile it and verify the result against the bytecode that's publicly available. Edit: the source itself is based off of [2]. The custom part is ```contract PonziCoin...```. It's well written in the way that all Solidity code is well written... [1] https://etherscan.io/verifyContract https://etherscan.io/verifyContract [2] https://github.com/humaniq/ico-contract/ https://github.com/humaniq/ico-contract/
- zerostar07 9y agoI mean, a real decentralized ponzi should not have a centralized founder. It should randomly reassign the owner of the contract (is that possible?) or at least the premined to a random member. Now that is a ponzi i could trust
- Torgo 9y agoContracts don't have a native concept of ownership, but you can code access controls that are keyed to a variable that contains the allowed account address.
- qwerty456127 9y agoGreat news. I have always believed Ponzi and alike schemes should be as legal and available as any other kind of gambling and lottery as long as the people introduced are well informed abut the nature of the scheme and the risks it means. I know some people who had participated in a distributed Ponzi scheme consciously and with notable success while I don't know a single person who had won anything above $2 in a lottery.
- dragonwriter 9y ago> I know some people who had participated in a distributed Ponzi scheme consciously Unless they were running the scheme, it can't have been a Ponzi if they, as participants, were aware of its structure. Presumably, you mean a pyramid scheme.
- qwerty456127 9y agoYes, a pyramid scheme, but Wikipedia still calls it a Ponzi scheme. I mean this one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MMM_Global https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MMM_Global I don't recommend it, I also know many people who have lost their money of course though I still think it's much better than a lottery: the whole thing about profiting from it is investing humble amounts you can afford to loose and withdrawing at the right moment, that's a lot like fishing or trading BitCoins.
- phyller 9y agoClearly this person has minimal experience in fraud, this is a horribly set up ponzi scheme. The investors can make a profit purely with their own actions, and remove any ETH that is currently in there. I thought about doing it, but don't feel like getting into cryptocurrencies and putting up $30K to get a positive return. The way you can rip this off is buy a bunch of coins at once, push up the value, and then sell them all. You have to buy a maximum of 400 PonziCoins before you can start making a profit, but then the more you buy, then cash out, the more profit you make. This is if the current price is .02 ETH per PC, which I've heard it's not anymore. +----------+------+----------------+ | numCoins | cost | return if sold | +----------+------+----------------+ | 100 | 2 | -1 | | 200 | 6 | -2 | | 300 | 14 | -2 | | 400 | 30 | 2 | | 500 | 62 | 18 | | 600 | 126 | 66 | | 700 | 254 | 194 | | 800 | 510 | 514 | | 900 | 1022 | 1282 | | 1000 | 2046 | 3074 | +----------+------+----------------+ Worst case scenario is the price has just gone up, and you need to buy 100 PC to make the price double. But immediately you can sell for half your cost, instead of 1/4 because you made the price double. Do this again, but now you have twice the number of coins to sell, you are already breaking even on your first batch. Next round you make money on your first batch, break even with the second, lose with the third. But the fourth round you are making so much from the first and second rounds, breaking even with the third, and only losing half of your fourth, that you come out ahead. You can't make money forever, you will just take all ETH that has been put in before, which will be a small amount. Then nothing is left and it will be bankrupt until someone else puts money in. But it's a guaranteed way to get your own money back, if you can afford to go at least 4 rounds, if it works exactly as the site says, and if no one cashes out coins before you do. The risk is that someone waits and cashes out after you put your money in and before you have cashed out, you have to do your transactions all at once to be successful. I don't know how this works behind the scenes, I don't advocate for any of this, and I won't be trying it myself. I also am a little disappointed to realize I may have provided the best argument yet to make this thing go. So don't put your money in there, you are probably going to lose it.
- DoreenMichele 9y agoQ: Is this a scam? A: It's as much a scam as 99% of the ICOs out there, but it's more transparent about it. If only real life had such easily spotted scams. "Warning: This is a scam" labelling would be so helpful.
- salzburger 9y agoWhy are people putting money in this? it has like 70k already..is everyone stupid?
- hndamien 9y agoThis is a pyramid scheme and not a Ponzi. I'm disappointed.
- agitator 9y agoThe white paper made my day. haha
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- socialist_coder 9y agoUPDATE: > This has gotten crazy out of hand, I apologize but we will no longer be selling PonziCoin on this site because this was a joke. I cannot terminate the contract but I will not be selling any coins that I own. The Buy button is disabled on the site. Also, if you checked the eth contract you will see it has basically $0 in it, down from over $175,000. I think what happened is that the BUY button was disabled on the site, the message added, and then people started dumping their coins and it was all gone. https://etherscan.io/address/0xe3f64dc522a66405c51d96aae234217a03502bb4 https://etherscan.io/address/0xe3f64dc522a66405c51d96aae2342...