What you fail to understand Ritch, is that people actually believe the cover story of these Ponzis/scams.
They actually believed that Cloudminr was cloud mining, so why should they apply Ponzi trading principles to something they don't recognise as a Ponzi?
Whether or not you consider lying to people or being complicit in a lie is a legitimate business practice is, in the end, down to your own personal morality.
I'm pretty sure that most people knew that this was a fraud, but also were sure that they will be smart enough to get out _before_ it collapses...
Sure most investors did'nt unterstand how Ponzis and Scammers work. So what I should tell these loosers, I've never already told before? I don't know. Perhaps my English is too bad to understand my rules? Perhaps, so sorry. All I have to know: I've never posted ref-links leading to scammers, so I have no problem in personal morality. But other people still post ref-links even to death-scams in this forum.
On the other side of the moon there are criminal acts with bitcoins - things you'd rather not see. Unlike the small fraudsters that we know, such people are really dangerous and also know no scruples. It's not the little deceiver that bring the Bitcoin discredited - it's the felon in the Darknet.
Well, I have no problem with our harmless little scammers (HYIPs) in "clearnet", because I'm not a criminal, have no bank-account outside germany and I pay my taxes ... and heh! I got my ROI.
But most important: I'm allways smart enough to get out before it collapses. All of you should be smart enough too ... no later than learning by doing ... or read my rules of splitting investments and how to scam a scammer, so you have a good chance of not to lose anything under the line of Excel.
It's realy easy and no kind of luck.