It's funny...coins like DASH are allowed to go up in price and not be called a Ponzi (masternodes sure helped DASH - the promise of free coins forever for holding enough of them and not selling- sounds a bit like lending doesn't it? It basically works exactly the same way - PoS mining/staking isn't much different either except the yearly interest they give you is a fixed percentage instead of variable although the more often you stake, the more it compounds and higher staking amounts tend to pay more often)
DASH was even moaning about Bitconnect to coinmarketcap's Twitter (calling it a Ponzi, no less) when it was rivalling it's billion dollar marketcap and overtaking them. The same day coinmarketcap revised the circulating supply of Bitconnect and it fell from around 6th place to 16th (I can't actually remember the positions but something along those lines).