I don't know if it convinces me that Groupon is "poised for collapse", but it certainly exposes several risks in the business model (for Groupon, the merchant, and the consumer), as well as how competitors can take advantage of those.
I went in with my metaphorical trigger finger on the "flag" button, but it does seem to add a new and useful perspective that I haven't seen yet. Explaining Groupon as a network of loans makes a lot of sense.
In fact, as someone who has resisted the characterization of Groupon as a "Ponzi scheme" on the grounds that I prefer the term actually mean something specific, this has gone a ways to explaining how that may actually be true. But the interesting scheme isn't so much in the investors, where people have been talking about it, but in the way that businesses are being paid with revenues from the subsequent Groupons, and so on. There's a lot of loan risk in a lot of directions on Groupon's balance sheet. It seems to me they don't have to be off by much for it to crumble. "Collapse" in the title is not just a linkbait word, the author really outlines how the whole thing might very quickly collapse.
When you look at the $1bil they made last year in funding, and what amount they listed in their IPO paperwork, they certainly look and feel like a ponzi scheme. I hope they are not, but it feels that way. I'm staying as far away from that stock as possible.
