Whatever happened, AM wasnt a ponzi. They already paid out ~6x more to investors than they collected from them. Thats by definition completely impossible for a ponzi and a very rare, if not unique occurrence in the whole of bitcoin history. Try naming two other companies that even paid out 100% of their IPO in divs, let alone ~600%.

Now its possible its a legit operation that turned in to a scam, but many things dont make much sense to me if that were the case. To name just one, AM could have collected a shitload more money by pretending to have finished BE3000 which everyone was expecting, and collecting sales and cloudmining sales based on that.