Topic: How can I spot Ponzi schemes? (Read 2305 times)

It's good to check if there is a phone and local address, but it's not sufficient. When the investment site show you an address, try to find it on google maps or any other app. The address can be fake and doesn't exist in real life.

HashOcean did it. They had phone number, address, but all fake. The legitimacy of site owners is important too, look if they are reputable persons in Bitcoin businesses area, possible to know it when they are members of BitcoinTalk Forum.

Cloud mining sites are not appealing they are appalling, and the simplest way to know if a site is ponzi is to see if the returns are way better than anything you could get, the website looks unprofessional, there are not phone numbers you can call or a physical address, there are lies in the web page, and there probably more signs to identify a website as a ponzi.

Pretty much anything that guarantees profit is a scam, no matter how it's worded. I've made a little bit from ponzi schemes but i've also lost a little bit. It's fun to invest a little bit in them and make a little bit of cash but most of the time they will collapse before you get anything out of em.

For me almost all even they are giving small percentage they are just the same ponzi schemes there is no investment and ponzi sites that actually that can stay for too long just to give free profit from their investors..
All earnings and profit needs to hard in order to earn a good profit.. if you are just invest it in ponzi you will regret in the end.

well, if the website offer your about more than 100% a year, it is certain that they are all scammers who want to steal our money. 20% per year maybe a ponzi scammer too. You have to do a lot of analysis if you want to make sure whether it it ponzi or not. However, your money is your money, do not invest your money in some places where you can not hold your property or something like that

Not really, there have been ponzi schemes that offered low rates and showed some sort of proof that they are working to give their investors some return, but in the end after months or even years of collecting deposits they still ran away. If it is well made, there is a chance that no one can detect that it is a ponzi, regardless of it having low rates.

Ponzi schemes are identified by always promising a very high ROI at times this is so high that gullible falls as easy prey, So we should be very careful not lose our hard earned money Some Ponzi scheme will collect money and disappear.

Sometimes those big affiliate commisions are really indication of sites that are purely ponzi and some people would really take this opportunity without harming their own money and besides that they will still invite fools to join the website and thats the way they able to earn money.

that surely a big indicator to us to point out that the site is a ponzi scheme since how can a legit site earn on that if they give huge affiliate commission on his affiliators? Well thats a big red flag to us and we should be warned to avoid on investing on that sites since its super obvious that they will deceived and scam our money.

And in addition to that we should avoid investing at cloudmining or whatsoever like that so we can save our money from dirty handed person.

No need to worry much on ROI but first look for where they want to invest your money and from that business is it possible to generate so many profits. Because some of the sites paid to people for more than a year before they close the site. So when they are paying if you google it surely you will get a good opinion about these sites but at the end, they will surely close the site. If you think that they do not have any good working business module, then don't invest your money in those sites.

It is not so easy to detect ponzi schemes, you have some that you can easily detect, but there are others that you will not suspect that this is ponzi scheme


The first thing you should investigate When you see any website that promises X returns:

- Is there real business?

Second thing you should investigate:

- What is the revenue from this real business?

Then investigate more details such as:

- Real name of site owner

- company headquarters

These rules apply to cloud mining sites,  bitcoin double sites, normal hyip sites that promise 3% per day or that say they have a trade bot



PS: do not be fooled when you read "registered company in the UK"

Affiliate commission depending on the % every invite that will invest in the site this is considered as ponzi.
Daily % earning, without a proof that they can sustain their capital to run the site for a long term.
Don't risk if you can't afford to lose.
All identification of some PONZI are all made with lies to entice potential investors.

even ponzi is now easily revealed, it is still annoying. as you can see in this site, the referral spam is often popped out. as well, bitcoin bans referral spam but not the scam to prevent moderator abuse.

Ponzi offers users things which are too good to be true. So we should be very skeptical about those. They have ridiculous returns, like they will say that they can double your bitcoin in 24 hours. 200% return in 24 hours - something is obviously fishy. All ponzi operators keep their identity secret. They never reveal their true identity.

For you to find  out the Ponzi scheme sites or coins, they will offered something better or more than you invested unto them. They are also great to make promises to their investor. If there are no proof of evidence that they have a farm of business neither the identity of the owner of the project better stay away from them.

its easy to spot
1. affiliate commission
2. daily % earning
3. No risk
4. No real identifcation of the company

In summary, any services which are having improper income generation methods and trying to circulate existing member's money to attract new people should be concluded as ponzi. When are looking at their business model, we can make this conclusion.

Unfortunately ponzis are now coming backed by a known business concepts. Cloud mining must be a good example here.

As spotting obvious ponzi has become as an easy task for everyone, now abusers are coming with covered ponzi. We can realize their actual business only after certain period of time. I am not finding any working idea to identify them other than staying away from them for some time but watching them closely.

for cloud mining, in a nutshell, if they are offering referral bonus, it is a scam.

for PTC, http://www.scamdetector.info/scam-portrait.html has all the information, but in a nutshell, if the need of investing before cashing out, it is a ponzi.

for investment, if they are refusing to provide the source of income, like how they are to be used, they are likely a form of ponzi.


so on, AFAIK.

Ponzi scams are offering very high interest per year, generally if you see some programs offer very high interests, they must be ponzi scams.

if you have not money, and you want mining use create cloud mining site and real mining
i think is not profitable, except you can give return to investor very low, but is very low return nothing people interest youre service

well it does not always hurt people because the early investors sometimes make some money out of it, but all in all it is a bad thing and if something sounds too good to be true then it is most probably just a ponzi.

How to Spot obvious Scams in Crypto - https://steemit.com/scam/@ash/how-to-spot-obvious-scams-in-crypto

Well my own method of identifying ponzi scheme is to google search and check reviews of that particular site, their ROI is another factor to be considered, high rate of ROI is clue and indicator of the scheme not lasting.

Well , that's a nice question for a newbie like you here. So you may not be a victim by the Ponzi scheme. It is a kind of business or coins who give any promises  big in return in your small capital in a quick period of time only. And the profit always comes from the capitalist. then in the long run they will runaway.

Apparently that's one of the hardest thing for other people to believe. There's no safe opportunity in this world. Every investment have its risk and the more risk an investment has, the more profits it can give you. Ponzi site has overused the words: "safe", "legit", "lifetime", and "investment". Those are total opposites of what they actually offer..

It's not legit since they don't even have any proof as to how do they multiply money in such short period of time. It's not a lifetime opportunity because they only run for a couple of months and run away when they think the time is right. And of course it's not safe since it's a total scam.

ponzi scheme is a thing that hurt many people. ponzi characteristic feature is that you promised to get huge profits. when you are only required to save capital there. that is the hallmark of Ponzi. we must be able to distinguish what is a ponzi and which are not. benefit from an investment of only about 5%. and Ponzi promised more than it.

This is the simplest thing to answer. Just ask yourself one simple question, this thing this people or site is offering, in a sane society, is it even possible and if not bolt but if you are still not convinced, just go type in Google xxxx review and be watchful of the date of the review you are reading and from there you can make a decision whether to part with your money or not. Furthermore, if you do decide to move forward, just know that you have 99% chance that your money is not coming back...

I guess, It isn't hard to spot or determine if a certain website is a scam such as cloud mining services etc. once you notice that they are offering a high return or ROI then they are surely is that is the very first sign that a site is a ponzi schemes . and some of them are offering a free capital to start in order to try their fake investment system which they think that can convince people to input more amount .

We need to be prepared for outside ponzi schemes too. Most of the ponzis, I do see are being advertised through faucets like freebitco.in and in some famous crypto news sites. We cannot find these site's admin on this forum.

Best practice must be we need to look for their source of income. If it is legit, then we can work with them. If they just circulation people's money then we must stay away.

Many of the schemes were announced in the forum itself. All must you need to do is check the op trust and feedback who creates the concern thread. Schemes such doubling, over earnings, high payment campaigns, cloud mining and etc. I hope most of the people have crossed across these kind of schemes at once atleast.

There is no safe investment at all even in real life

But some investments can be considered as fairly safe.
For example casinos that are a bit old and powerful seem like fairly safe.

There is no safe or legit investment opportunity online, think about it why would the people capable of earning profit want to share their profit with people like us? they are not idiots but they think we are that's why they offer these cloud mining or profitable investment opportunities.

That is a very good topic to talk with about spotting pozi schemes, and I say its very easy to know which you could really observe it in mining sites who offers investments to you. Their ways is very aggressive to get any investments coming from you, and they even more particular on the big profit offers and most of the ideas were very promising. I would highly suggest to make ghost investments to them and yet the real score results to ponzi schemes.

I agree with you. The easiest way to spot a Ponzi schemes whose owners intends to scam you is by the sugarcoated juicy offers. Of course, It's very likely that We all like such offers so we tend to fall prey to scams.




I agree with you to some extent. particularly MLM schemes are not entirely ponzi schemes (To some extent) because they make It clear that Earnings come from referrals.

Hey, new comer, you can figure it out when you can see a good and big offer to you. And mostly they use flowering words to gather people and scam them. In bitcoin there are a lot of ponzi schemes around, just open your eyes widely to see it and make some background check.

    First off, If the company is any way trying to sell you "Powers" or "Hash Rates" or "Ghz" or lineal feet of extension cords, I would be willing to bet the farm that they are a Ponzi.

    Now, having said that. I was very interested in these Ponzis in my BTC infancy and, much like yourself OP, started a thread about the ethics of investing into a suspected Ponzi just to snag a profit and get the hell out quicker than Nestle. I see nothing wrong with it as long as you don't risk more than you are comfortable losing and don't fall into the trap of watching your numbers grow on one of their "live" profit tickers that are constantly growing so that when you want to withdraw your Bitcoin, you may have second thoughts. If it is constantly on the rise, why pull it out now? Tomorrow it will be 25% larger. Well tomorrow it will probably be gone! Don't be drawn to the growing numbers, they are the siren song of your doom. I tried a few of these myself and I never lost any money doing so. I guess I was lucky. Invest in cloud mining at your own risk. If you do, get in, get out, be happy with a small profit because that is all you will make. If you make anything at all. I am sure the know-it-alls here are going to tear my answer apart but that is ok. I'm used to it. We all have our different approaches to this life thing.
Good luck on your Bitcoin Journey. Try Bitcoin affiliation, It's worked out for me. Send me a P.M. if you are interested in some affiliate marketing tips.

Constant 20% guaranteed gains during the duration of the investment is very hard to achieve, but no impossible considering volatility of cryptos.
But we need to remember that company offering you investing option needs to earn as well.  For you to receive 20% their profits have to be much higher than that 20%.

I am talking here about "cloud mining ponzies" only and I am listing below a few red flags you should NOT ignore for your own safety.

1. Offering free MH/s KH/s or GH/s usually 10,15 or 20 is the numbers to attract users.
2. You cannot withdraw if you don't deposit at least once in the site (this void the free hashes given)
3. Offering to pay you from 5 to 25% referral commission for every person you bring in under your name.
4. Not showing, pool data, mining hardware, (pictures can be faked ) not showing video of them filming during operation.
5. Having fictive numbers and address on a certain country which 99.99% of the cases is a line that transfers you somewhere else.
6. Claiming to have different data centers for mining in different continents and refusing anyone who wants to pay a visit to them.

If you follow this 6 red flags you will never be burned from cloud mining scams ever again.

that is quite easy. If they offer you a interest about more than 10% a month without doing anything, they are truly ponzi scheme. However, please learn how to distinguish the casino invesetment and Ponzi. Moreover, in ponzi, they always offer interest and in some way, they promise never let you lose your money while you can lose you money in casino

My suggestion is to check the sites traffic if its getting lots of visits.
And also check it's ranking through it's alexa there are pretty good sites out there that you can search for this.

Do check for bad reviews cause sometimes people does some reviews in cloud mining sites.
Identify the domain or hosting of the site do some background check like domaon name, ip owner information and bunch of other stuff.

Actually you dont need to invest to those cloud mining sites cause you'll only lose profit instead gaining from it. You can earn a good amount of money here just by doing some signature campaign

It is easy to spot a ponzi scheme, when a site offered a great ROI in a short time or the site promise a big stable profit daily or monthly then it is probably a ponzi site, to detect a ponzi site juts think logically, if the site can give you such a huge profit, then why the site still need your money? sometimes some of the user knows it is a ponzi site but still joined the site because of the greed

Aside from using common sense, what else would you need?? 

And, it's not just ponzi schemes you gotta watch out for, there's also those hyiP's, MLM's, and anything at all that promises absurd returns.

Just use your head and don't get lured with these 'instant', 'high', 'assured' gains. Those are nothing but bull.
If it's anything even remotely suspicious or unfeasible, then stay away.

That is one of the most easy question. All you need to ask yourself, "Is it possible to have such profits in real what sites guarantee!!"
Here banks with over $100 billions are only able to promise 8-10% interest on FDs and RDs in a year. How can a site double one's bitcoin in 100 hours! Lol! 
Cloud Minings and HYIPs sites are 99.999% scam. If you think, you could grow your bitcoin with them, better turn elsewhere.

high guaranteed profit higher than 20% are possible depend on the amount of time they give, if they say stupid stuff like 100% in 24H, yes you have a point, but 20% in 1 year sound more reasonable to me
about information given i see that some hyip have evolved they tell you the info and maybe they are true, but still is a scam, so beaware

Always read their TOS! This is one of the easiest ways. What to look for?
Promises of lifetime contracts
Unreal rates (300% in a year)
Statements like "we guarantee profit"
Promises of buying back your contracts at high rates
Very high referral bonuses

The easiest way is to just look at what they offer. Most will offer things like, for example, 10-100% per day gains. If that were possible, you would turn $1 into over $100 trillion (multitudes higher than the total dollar amount in the WORLD) in under a year.

Pretty good number of things that you can see about a company that more or less help to confirm that they're a ponzi scheme and aren't really making any money.
1) Promises to pay a really high interest rate that are used to lure you into the scheme.
2) Very vague details about the company itself and the people inside of it. Most companies like to show what they're doing as a way to make people feel better and to show off their executives, Ponzi's typically don't.
3) Referral programs with a high reward for getting new people into the investment itself.

These are not all of the things that will confirm if something is a Ponzi but it sure as hell will probably weed out around 80 percent of them.

I think the first thing is to know if the investment actually seeks to solve real world problem. In addition, it is necessary to know the team behind it.
If there are very reputable people, there are less chances that the business is not legit. But there is no hundred percent guarantee of this, it is necessary to know if they have the resources to make the business work.

Spotting Ponzi schemes, HYIP or any other investing scheme designed to scam you is pretty easy.
You just need to know where to look and how to read signs. Also bear in mind that there are some extra elaborate scam attempts.

Signs of standard Ponzi:

1. high guaranteed profits - it is impossible to generate stable high returns, basically anything higher than 20% is totally out of the question and should be avoided
2. Risk free investment - You need to remember that real investing is never 100% risk free, there is always a chance that you will lose the money
3. Zero information, or fake info about people behind the company - if you can't find address, phone number, real name of the CEO or staff, no social media profiles etc - it is a huge red flag.
4. Vague info about what this investment is really about - you need to know how this investment will generate money, you can't conjure money from thin air.

It is possible to identify that it is a ponzi scheme when there is no product or service capable of generating demand, although the proposal says that the business is something revolutionary. I think with time of experience this becomes easier to identify, especially when one sees the unrealistic gains that are offered by such schemes.

Are you reading it right? He is not even planning to build a cloud mining site or wanting to join it. He's just simply curious about it.


Most of the signs for a cloud mining is being said by other members here. Maybe you should forget about getting curious with this things.

And just avoid when you see an exaggerated return of investment effortless.

Well first, welcome to the world of crypto's 


They are everywhere mostly here in forum you can found them in investor-based games. You can see a lot of them there but don't invest.


It's pretty obvious, they are going to ask you to invest / deposit to them and you'll receive 100%+ profit in return without doing anything. Whatever it takes, don't try to invest into something that you'll just sit and wait for your profit without any source of income but from other depositors, you'll end up donating your bitcoins to them.

you want create cloud mining site or only want join to cloud mining site
if you want create cloud mining site, and you have not ready mining hardware, i think you only want create ponzy site, not real mining

Don't be deceived on those too good to be true returns because those are just tools would really lure out greedy newbies to invest their money on because they always believe that they could possibly make them rich which isnt true at all.

Cloud mining = not profitable and the one which promises to give high daily return is just hyip not cloud mining.
Bitcoin doubler = all of them are scam no-one can double bitcoin within few hours.
Bitcoin donation ponzi = the one who will be in lowest level of the pyramid will struggle to get back what he have put into the program
Bitcoin hyip = They are hyip so they will not be online forever, some may run after few weeks some may run after few month. They will scam when they will stop getting new investment.

Better not to invest in any cloud mining site or any other program that offers high daily/weekly return. Learn trading so that you can make some bitcoin.

Go to this section - https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=207.0
There are all kind of scams - ponzi, fake cloud mining, doublers, pyramid, matrix etc.
You will find all sings there 

The most obvious indicator is to give high return in short time, they promise a fixed percentage daily forever without clearing the kind of job they do to grow your money, the legit business does not guarantee profits. You can see how many sites offer 10% or more daily and forever, but after 1 or 2 months maximum they close and run away with your money.

That's a bit extreme in my opinion.
You CAN make profit with btc cloud mining

But clearly in general you won't, and even if you make profit the risk you're taking is SO HIGH it's definitely not covered by the profit you'll get

as a rule of thumb whenever something looks too good to be true that means it is most probably a scam.
in case of a Ponzi scheme the scam always claims to have a backing business that is generating the profit (in this case mining bitcoin) but in reality there is nothing, there is no business (and in this case there are no mining equipment).

you ca read more about cloudmining scam here: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/cloudmining-101-ponzi-risk-assessment-878387
and simply, as long as you haven't seen the place having real hash power don't trust it.

p.s. also remember that when it comes to cloudmining it is not enough to be legit, they aren't exactly profitable investments.

Ponzi is money game and always has pyramid scheme,  takes money from people who are new sign up & invest, and enrich the old members, Ponzi usually have a tier of their direct referrals. Cloud Mining originally formed and operated in mining system. However, there are some owners who are tempted to embezzle investment funds that come in. They take full advantage of mines. So, Just pure revolving funds from member get member.

First know the meaning of "PONZI SCHEME" stealing others money, then runaway in the end. If the information is not complete details about their business like from the owner, their officials are transparent, the developer is not updating the people form time to time, don't have proof that they have a business, or mining farm or not showing any road map, project flow, etc. those are the signs can be consider.

No cloud mining will return you a bitcoin profit.
i.e. if you put in X Bitcoins, you'll get back less than X.

The question is how small or large your loss will be.

Go to  hashnest.com

 They are run by the biggest builder of asics in the world.

They are the God or King or Goddess or Queen of cloud mining.

Read their offers  basically they offer  3 to 5%  for 6 month contracts.

Any cloud mining   That offers a lot more is most likely no good.

and also we can detect it as ponzi if the site doesn't have any proof of their mining farm,location,owners information. So for us to not get victimized by this scheme well we should not try to invest at them since i truly believe that we don't have any good fortune at them, they where surely be turned scam somehow and that is the play if ponzi scam investment site.

In cloudmining case, usually you should research more about the company profile and the proof of their mining activity.

The basic of ponzi scheme is your money come from the next investor, then the next investor money come from the next one, ect.
Mostly ponzi scheme offer you with high return investment than other investment. The characteristics usually can longer survive, until the owner/company of such investment can't repay or just runs away the money.

Also there are a similar scheme, pyramid scheme, but usually pyramid scheme very vulnerable to collapse early.

The real meaning of ponzi scheme is giving a promise of a greater return in a short amount of time and you will be getting a share of the later investors. The problem with cloud mining sites is that ,the mining difficulty will keep on increasing and the chances are that you might not even get the invested money and if the price of bitcoin drops they could void your contract. If you are planning to invest in cloud mining just check every details before entering.

Easy. If they promise things that are too good to be true, they probably aren't.
Just go to this section: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=207.0 and avoid all websites there.

I'm pretty new to Bitcoin and the idea of cloud mining seems pretty appealing. However I keep hearing about Ponzi schemes which rely entirely on new members to stay alive.  Besides the blindingly obvious, what are the main signs that a service might be a Ponzi?