Topic: www.pon-z.com - The World's First Honest Ponzi Scheme (Read 6203 times)

but this will lead quickly to very high amounts of bitcoins to payin

Right, I think they operated pretty much like they said they would, but the way it was setup caused the thing to fizzle out really quick.

Another unrelated idea: setup a site based on a progressive betting scheme like martingale. First depositor puts in 1, second depositor puts in 2. 1.1 goes to the first depositor, 0.9 goes to a jackpot, and 0.1 goes to the house. At each round the required deposit doubles, while the probability of winning the jackpot increases. "Jackpot" is probably a bad term because you really don't want to win it. It probably doesn't pay you back fully. Rather, it ends the round, pays you something, and starts the next deposit at 1. Hope I'm making any sense with this. Probably needs a lot of tweaking. May be able to make something better based on labourchere. I guess the main thrust of the idea is that because ponzi schemes require increasing numbers or amounts of deposits, you simply enforce this as part of the game.

They didn't do it right but if we change the formula we could make it fun. I would be wanting to host/operate a corrected version if we can get the source of it to save some dev time. If the owner or OP could contact me.

ok when they did everything right -> why are they offline??
if i get the source i will keep it up running

I like it. Something like that could easily work for a sustainable linear (non-pyramidal) redistribution scheme that was still entertaining.


This actually adds up. Checking my copy of received.txt, you were depositor number 65. There were 140 total deposits in the game so there were 75 beneath you. These 75 show up in blockexplorer. Furthermore, the amounts of those distributions are correct. I added two columns to received.txt to make this. Sum the last column to get your 0.5422.

It was not a good ponzy formula except for the first 50 maybe. The way of using bitcoin and the blockchain was good so maybe some better long term concept will emerge out of it.

i could think of a game where every one can only deposit a fix amount and it get distributed randomly between x/10 of the participants. Some account will win some will lose.

spended 1 BTC, got back 0.5422... i think they got 50% of the fundings.. some users added 30 BTC or 50BTC so that was huge win for this scammers 

does anybody know the owner of the site or the domain owner?

and gone...

This isn't really the first honest ponzi in bitcoin land, there was one when GLBSE started last year.

Wasn't too popular though.

is there any formula for the correct strategy?
(e.g. x+n-1/....)

is there any newer one availlable?

FYI

I've now 1/5 of my deposit after 1/3 of my 100s income so i guess that without "miracle" I won't break even 

If this scheme works this way, does that mean it is sustainable? As in, even years into the future, it can in theory still offer payouts to new players at the same magnitude now?

Not much of a Ponzi scheme then.

Well, you also have to ensure that people after you deposit enough to make your investment worthwhile, because you will get a share of only what the next 100 people put in.

Yes, this correct. So the correct strategy is to deposit more than the max deposit from the 100 previous depositor?

Each new entry gets split between the 100 previous depositors, weighted by the amount they have put in. So if every one before you puts 10 BTC and you only put 1 BTC, you get 1/991 of each deposit, not 1/100, that is a total of 100*10*1/991 ~ 1.009082 BTC minus the fees. And this is the ideal situation. If you put 100 BTC and everyone else put 1 BTC, you get 100/199 of every new deposit, that is, after 100 deposits of 1 BTC, 100*100/199 ~ 50.25 BTC: you loose almost half of the money you put in.

For you to win any significant money (say more than 1%), you have either to be near the top of the list, or to make sure people before you put less than you and people after you put more than you at an increasing rate (because they will start to split the new income with you and since they put more than you they get a bigger share than you).

Why?

It should be 0.01 x 100 = 1 less fees; the previous depositors -100 don't get anything anymore so at time speaking total 128 deposits the first 28 depositing addresses are out of the game so any deposits will be split only by 100.

No: if the guy just before you deposited 100 BTC and everyone else deposit 1 BTC, then out of the next 100 transactions you'll get 99/199 + 1/100 = 0.5075, minus the fees.

Why do the charts stop there? It would be interesting to see how many people receive less than 100%. Also, how much the first addresses, which purportedly belong to the creator of pon-z, have received. As a creator, you can play as much as you want before letting other people in, as all the money you put in is redistributed to the previous players, that is you.

The first address seems to have received more than 147 BTC for 1 BTC invested (http://blockchain.info/address/18DEHVMSfKHJyLmoKEcrorVKpJnzv1DbTJ). The second one, which belongs certainly to the creator as well, has received 231 BTC for 50 BTC (http://blockchain.info/address/1HsXuUEmdMeBtZAz6oiB3BxBt9HJ2tqtAx). You can bet that number three and four, all above 1 BTC, also belong to the creator, and together have received more than 168 BTC for 54 BTC (http://blockchain.info/address/1FsARshLM2ek5cfsvAtGf97ejUzYzSWuk9 and http://blockchain.info/address/18DEHVMSfKHJyLmoKEcrorVKpJnzv1DbTJ). I am confident that at least those 4 addresses belong to the creator of pon-z.com, as they also exhibit the pattern of not having been touched at all. This is the case for a few addresses more, then the pattern changes and people get their "wins".

So, with only the first four addresses, the creator of pon-z.com has made at least 546 BTC for an investment of 105 BTC. Not bad, eh? Those BTC won't be received by other "players". The fact that you only gain from the next 100 transactions makes it even less profitable than a real pyramiding scheme for participants, except for the first ones, when the new incoming BTC are not split amongst 100 people.

This is how I understood it, so if the next 100 after you deposit 1BTC you are breakeven (less fees) if they deposit more than 1 BTC you win smthg.