
Show HN: PonziCoin, a transparent, decentralized Ponzi Scheme you can trust - vertoc
http://ponzicoin.co/
======
saalweachter
I 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?

~~~
iaw
"Your honor, my client did not defraud the plaintiffs with a financial crime.
It was a parody financial crime but the plaintiff mistook the parody for
sarcasm and genuinely bought the parody product. This case should be dismissed
based on the parody financial crimes precedent set by Virginia v. Horwitz
Brothers"

~~~
ubernostrum
"Your Honor, my client never intended for the plaintiffs to cash the souvenir
checks he issued."

(it may be I spend too much of my non-tech-internet time reading
/r/legaladvice)

------
iaw
> We suggest shilling this coin heavily to your family and friends like a
> fucking sociopath.

That line made my day.

------
geoffreyy
> Q: Is this site secure?

> A: We use Equifax-grade security.

haha

~~~
mtgx
Government-grade security would've worked just as well, but probably most
people wouldn't get _that_ joke.

------
phyller
Clearly 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.

------
socialist_coder
UPDATE:

> 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/0xe3f64dc522a66405c51d96aae2342...](https://etherscan.io/address/0xe3f64dc522a66405c51d96aae234217a03502bb4)

------
kgwgk
Warning: this is a scam. The real one is at
[https://ponzico.win](https://ponzico.win)

------
lpage
This has seen ~$10,600USD worth of love so far [1]. The contract source is
comedy gold [2].

[1]
[https://etherscan.io/address/0xe3f64dc522a66405c51d96aae2342...](https://etherscan.io/address/0xe3f64dc522a66405c51d96aae234217a03502bb4#transactions)
\- accessed at Wed Jan 24 16:10:39 EST 2018

[2]
[https://etherscan.io/address/0xe3f64dc522a66405c51d96aae2342...](https://etherscan.io/address/0xe3f64dc522a66405c51d96aae234217a03502bb4#code)

~~~
guiomie
Is this a well coded contract? Also, how come is the source code available? I
thought only bytcodes were pushed to the EVM ?

~~~
lpage
Etherscan 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/)

------
fictionfuture
SEC as the symbol was my favorite part:

------
badosu
I wonder if there's liability for the author when people get damaged by this

------
qwerty456127
Great 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
> 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
Yes, 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.

------
cobookman
This was done with Ponzi.io a while back. Founder shut it down as they were
afraid of breaking laws.

~~~
Nummeros
There are ponzis on Ethereum that are impossible to shut down

~~~
Retric
Difficult not impossible, killing Ethereum is one option.

~~~
rthomas6
And how would one go about killing Ethereum?

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _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.

------
gruez
>The World's First Legitimate Ponzi Scheme

I'm pretty sure this was done before. As a dapp even.

~~~
Nummeros
Yup. For example here:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/3g6ccj/these_are_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/3g6ccj/these_are_the_first_ever_verifiable_pyramid/)

~~~
45h34jh53k4j
It 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
Huh? How was it hacked?

------
zerostar07
I 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
Contracts 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.

------
DoreenMichele
_Q: 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.

------
slimshady94
Can you see how many tokens have been bought till now?

~~~
terhechte
[https://etherscan.io/address/0xe3f64dc522a66405c51d96aae2342...](https://etherscan.io/address/0xe3f64dc522a66405c51d96aae234217a03502bb4#readContract)

There's $9,047.32 worth of ETH in the contract already. Price seems to be 0.08
ETH

------
BLanen
This isn't the first. Not by a long shot.

I remember these 'transpararent ponzis' from years ago.

~~~
econner
Yea, 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/)

------
atentaten
Awesome! Just bought 100K worth.

------
toddkazakov
The white paper is great

------
hndamien
This is a pyramid scheme and not a Ponzi. I'm disappointed.

------
frinxor
This is fantastic. Cant lose more than 75%? I'm in

~~~
sushid
You can lose more than 75%. If there's no ETH in the wallet they can't pay you
back out.

~~~
vertoc
I 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.

~~~
phyller
It 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

------
thrillgore
Finally, an honest pump and dump ICO for me!

~~~
stcredzero
PumpNDumpCoin?

------
agitator
The white paper made my day. haha

------
aakilfernandes
That logo is fantastic

