For example;
If someone invests $1000 and the scheme runs for a year, they will get 12 payments of $100 (10% per month for 12 months) so they will now have $1200. They would have made $200 profit.
Is it just me, or does that not make sense?
I'll try and explain it better.
A Ponzi offers a return of 10% per month.
A person decides to invest $1000.
If the Ponzi pays out for 12 months, the investor would have been paid $1200 in interest.
But they invested $1000, so they actual profit is only $200.
$1200 (interest) - $1000 (investment) = $200 (profit)
But most Ponzi wont last 12 months, most will not last more than a couple of weeks.
Hope this makes it helps.
There can be an "honest" Ponzi game. Weekly ponzi has been doing this on his second game now. He lists a deadline so all know when it will end. He tells you it is a ponzi so everyone knows that at the end the people not paid lose. He did not cut and run on the last one. His second round started tonight and he and an API problem. He spent an hour manually entering the addresses. By the time he was done he had over 100 BTC in his address. He could have cut and run, it would have been the perfect time for something like that. Instead he turned the payments back on and paid everyone that was due. It is a form of gambling. Just like Poker you take money from other players. So anyone that wins at poker is scamming the other players by all of the anti-ponzi crowd out there. As long as rules are followed and everyone can see those rules form the beginning there is no scam in my book. It is just high risk gambling. With that said there are a lot of these ponzi's that are just scams and lie to you saying they are investing and you will get this amount for investing, or they cut and run. Those are scams.