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Many investments come with a lot of risks. The risk of investment increases if an investor is involved in a Ponzi or Pyramid scheme. Since they are illegal, they need to identify these schemes cannot be stressed. That said, we will explain what these schemes are so that you know how to avoid them.
The term "Ponzi Scheme" is coined from the name of an Italian criminal named Charles Ponzi. He became famous for his fraudulent money-making system after moving to North America to demonstrate his illegal activities. He was able to defraud hundreds of investors through his scheme in the early 1920s. What more, the scheme took place for more than a year. Generally, a Ponzi scheme involves collecting money from newly deceived investors and paying to older investors. While this might make a lot of sense, there is a considerable problem — investors on the backend will not receive any payment. Therefore, the fraudster could leave anytime.
The most famous Ponzi scheme happened more than a decade ago in the United States. It was organized by Bernard Madoff, who deceived investors in Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC. He was able to build an extensive network of investors, extorting cash from them in the process. Madoff defrauded almost 5000 investors. However, he didn't invest the money in his scheme, and the fraud collapsed after a financial crisis was experienced in 2018. According to the SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission), the total amount Madoff defrauded from investors was approximately $65 billion. This dubious activity sparked an urgency for regulators and investment professionals to hunt for Ponzi schemes.
This works in the business sector. Here, the business promises payments or rewards for new members and those who invite other members. For instance, an impostor offers John and Joan a chance to purchase the distributorship rights at $500 each in a company. When purchased, they will both have the right to sell distributorships themselves earn their share for every new member recruited. However, the $500 obtained from their sales is shared with the impostor in a 50/50 agreement.
For John and Joan to recover their initial investment, they sell two distributorships to two new people. Then this burden of recovering the initial investment is passed to recruits. However, the scheme will eventually break down because of the number of new members that get enrolled. This is what makes the Pyramid scheme an illegal practice. Presently, the majority of Pyramid schemes do not offer products or services. They are sustained by the money gotten from new membership recruitments. Still, some Pyramid schemes may present themselves as a legal multi-level marketing (MLM) company that offers products or services. This is done to hide their fraudulent practices.
That said, most MLM companies are pyramid schemes, but not all MLM companies are illegal.
We now understand that both Pyramid and Ponzi schemes are forms of financial fraud. However, a Pyramid scheme is different from a multi-level marketing campaign.
They can be hugely devastating for any guilty party, and it is essential to take the necessary steps in order to avoid these schemes. There is no assurance that there will be an end to these practices, but we can apply caution to reduce casualties.
Ethereum celebrated an anniversary Friday, July 30. The world-changing blockchain that brought us smart chain technology and major innovations in crypto like decentralized finance and non-fungible tokens, turns six years old.
From the depths of Berlin in 2015, the blockchain built to change the world is on the verge of potentially its most important blockchain forks -- London Hard Fork.
As of late 2020, Ethereum has grown too big even for itself. The anticipation around crypto could not be higher for the upcoming fork. The first mentions of these changes came in 2019.
As the confetti settles from the birthday bash, Ethereum is set to make major changes in the functionality of its blockchain. On August 4th, Ethereum will complete its hard fork and take a critical step toward an overarching scalability upgrade of the network. But while all of crypto waits with bated breath, the Ethereum team appears unphased.
“Originally we envisioned something more like a big grant event where all the good things would happen at the same time and [Ethereum] would be a new blockchain and it would be a new protocol and people would have to take a lot of efforts to migrate over but later we've slowly changed the roadmap over to something that's much more incremental,” Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum, told the Lex Fridman Podcast in June.
The hard fork results in a new transaction validation system due to the EIP 1559 proposal that passed. The chain will utilize a proof-of-stake system, allowing for more scalability and environmentally friendly consensus.
“Proof of stake happens kind of overtime, and then sharding is added over time, and all of these features get added over time. And so the experience for just a regular Ethereum user will still feel very seamless. It's maybe a little bit more complex than the hard forks that we've already done, but from a user's point of view not by that much,” Vitalik continued.
The updates will incorporate cutting-edge blockchain technology like sharding and move the chain from proof-of-work versus a proof-of-stake. The implications of these changes could bring a more efficient, secure, and sustainable Ethereum blockchain.
The hard fork will integrate five immediate updates called EIPs (Ethereum Improvement Proposals). Each change aims at optimizing and improving the network.
The most controversial and anticipated upgrade, dubbed "London," is EIP 1559. The EIP 1559 will make Ethereum less inflationary and is controversial because it will begin burning fees that previously went to miners.
This upgrade is the central improvement in an attempt to generate greater bandwidth and reduce transaction fees on the chain and is critical to the changeover to Proof-of-Stake.
“I like proof of stake. And I've liked proof of stake for many years, basically because it just requires much less ongoing resource consumption.” Buterin explained to Fridman. And about the benefits of adding validators, Vitalik added: “This is good for a few reasons: one is the kind of environmental rationale that you're not breaking the environment. The second is that you're not taking away electricity and other resources from other people.”
The hard fork does not come without criticism. There is the issue with miners losing their fees and the questions around Miner Extractable Value (MEV) remain unanswered.
Some argue that proof-of-stake will increase the centralization of the chain as well. Vitalik celebrates the environmental benefits of the overall transition and the preferred long-term benefits of the updates.
He welcomes the criticisms as good problems to have and looks forward to solutions. Despite being ‘controversial’ it is still likely the most anticipated fork in crypto history.
As Vitalik told Fridman on the podcast, the user will not see too many changes in how Ethereum will work––the major changes come behind the scenes. The Ethereum chain has fought hard in seeking to solve major scalability issues like congestion and latency.
Throughout, it still holds strong as the second most important blockchain, and rightfully deserved. But if it wants to keep competing, it will need to try and catch up to the speeds and transactions of newer chains like Binance Smart Chain and Solana.
The new updates and their incremental applications should make the next few months––and years––an exciting race for the top crypto and blockchain.
ApeSwap has shifted the date for its seventh Initial Ape Offering (IAO) with play-to-earn protocol, Dragonary, following a change in IAO vesting process enacted by community votes.
BSC.News earlier reported ApeSwap’s partnership with Dragonary on July 29th to collaborate for its seventh Initial Ape Offering (IAO 007). The Decentralized Exchange (DEX) protocol scheduled the IAO for August 2nd. However, due to some quality changes that arose from the new IAO vesting proposal, the ApeSwap team has decided to postpone IAO 007, according to its Tweet, from 30th July.
“With that in mind, we will be delaying IA0 007. The new date for Dragonary’s IAO is set for August 7th at 16:00 UTC,” read the official ApeSwap Twitter communication.
An IAO is a unique innovation created by the Binance Smart Chain-based DEX, ApeSwap. It was designed to support promising projects with fundraising by listing their tokens.
Projects like ApeRocket, Bitfresh, Hifi DeFi, JediYield, HyperuleSwap, and Bishares have shown massive development since utilizing ApeSwap’s IAO platform. Dragonary is the latest to join.
The new vesting process requires that 25% of tokens will be distributed immediately and the remaining 75% of tokens will be distributed over three months.
Notably, the change was provoked by community votes after many ApeSwap users proposed a change in the vesting process. Users voted on a new token claim structure, and the campaign lasted for five days (July 17 to July 21).
To satisfy the needs of its users, the ApeSwap team has created a whole new set of smart contracts. The new smart contracts come with new audits to ensure that users' funds are safe and secure. According to the update, the date for completing the audits has been set, but there will be a need to test, review, and possibly re-audit codes if necessary.
Therefore, the postponement of the IAO is attributed to the fact that the ApeSwap team wants to make sure that the new smart contract codes, including audits, are working effectively. In essence, they want to have enough time to test the smart contracts before launching the IAO with Dragonary.
With this, ApeSwap ensures that the safety of the community is its number one priority. In addition, users can anticipate a flawless IAO for Dragonary.
ApeSwap is a top name in the BSC network. It is the leading DEX on the BSC, which offers users the best trading experience. ApeSwap is a blend of a decentralized exchange, yield farming, staking, and an automated market maker (AMM). ApeSwap users are urged to partake in its liquidity pool offerings via yield farming to earn its native BANANA token. What's more, these earned tokens can be used to stake and earn other tokens and unlock deluxe features.
For more information about ApeSwap, visit the platform's media links:
Pyramid and Ponzi schemes are very similar because they are based on the same concept. Many people get fooled by impersonating investors who guarantee massive profits in exchange for their funds. Otherwise called a money-doubling scheme, a Ponzi or a Pyramid scheme can be hugely devastating to any casualty.
Many investments come with a lot of risks. The risk of investment increases if an investor is involved in a Ponzi or Pyramid scheme. Since they are illegal, they need to identify these schemes cannot be stressed. That said, we will explain what these schemes are so that you know how to avoid them.
The term "Ponzi Scheme" is coined from the name of an Italian criminal named Charles Ponzi. He became famous for his fraudulent money-making system after moving to North America to demonstrate his illegal activities. He was able to defraud hundreds of investors through his scheme in the early 1920s. What more, the scheme took place for more than a year. Generally, a Ponzi scheme involves collecting money from newly deceived investors and paying to older investors. While this might make a lot of sense, there is a considerable problem — investors on the backend will not receive any payment. Therefore, the fraudster could leave anytime.
The most famous Ponzi scheme happened more than a decade ago in the United States. It was organized by Bernard Madoff, who deceived investors in Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC. He was able to build an extensive network of investors, extorting cash from them in the process. Madoff defrauded almost 5000 investors. However, he didn't invest the money in his scheme, and the fraud collapsed after a financial crisis was experienced in 2018. According to the SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission), the total amount Madoff defrauded from investors was approximately $65 billion. This dubious activity sparked an urgency for regulators and investment professionals to hunt for Ponzi schemes.
This works in the business sector. Here, the business promises payments or rewards for new members and those who invite other members. For instance, an impostor offers John and Joan a chance to purchase the distributorship rights at $500 each in a company. When purchased, they will both have the right to sell distributorships themselves earn their share for every new member recruited. However, the $500 obtained from their sales is shared with the impostor in a 50/50 agreement.
For John and Joan to recover their initial investment, they sell two distributorships to two new people. Then this burden of recovering the initial investment is passed to recruits. However, the scheme will eventually break down because of the number of new members that get enrolled. This is what makes the Pyramid scheme an illegal practice. Presently, the majority of Pyramid schemes do not offer products or services. They are sustained by the money gotten from new membership recruitments. Still, some Pyramid schemes may present themselves as a legal multi-level marketing (MLM) company that offers products or services. This is done to hide their fraudulent practices.
That said, most MLM companies are pyramid schemes, but not all MLM companies are illegal.
We now understand that both Pyramid and Ponzi schemes are forms of financial fraud. However, a Pyramid scheme is different from a multi-level marketing campaign.
They can be hugely devastating for any guilty party, and it is essential to take the necessary steps in order to avoid these schemes. There is no assurance that there will be an end to these practices, but we can apply caution to reduce casualties.
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