Everyone has encountered a Ponzi scheme, but you just don’t know it.

1. What is a Ponzi scheme? The Ponzi scheme is a financial investment fraud. It is the ancestor of the pyramid scheme. It is a financial scam that uses the money from new players to pay the interest of old players. In China, it can also be called "taking money from Peter to pay Paul" or "making money out of nothing". Generally, this kind of scheme will attract investors by promising high returns in a short period of time. The Ponzi scheme has been around for more than 100 years, and many illegal pyramid schemes are still able to use this method to amass a lot of money.

(1) The creator of the scam (who earns enough or the new investors cannot make up for the previous investors) (2) The investors who keep coming in (the principal is used as interest to pay the investors above) create a very profitable atmosphere. (3) The last investors to join (the receivers)

2. The author of the Ponzi scheme is Charles Ponzi, an Italian from the United States, who invented a scam during World War I. After World War I in 1919, the world economic system was in chaos. Charles Ponzi claimed in Italy that he could take advantage of the loophole of exchange rate differences, bought some stamps in the international exchange market, and sold these stamps to Americans at the purchase cost, with the difference in RMB. At the same time, he told his investors that this plan could bring up to 50% returns, and investors only needed to wait a few weeks to see the growth of their investment. People did not believe it at first, but some bold and wealthy customers took part of the money to try. Sure enough, the principal was returned in a few weeks and a high profit was made. Ponzi also produced advertisements and promotional materials for the plan and invited members of Pumpkin to market it. As more and more people joined the plan, his company gradually accumulated and began to receive a large amount of investment. But in fact, Ponzi did not buy any stamps or conduct any profitable transactions. The return he used was to use the money of new investors to pay the returns of early investors, while recovering a large amount of fees as his own "commission".

3. How to spot this scam

(1) In the example above, the exchange rate change is a hook (after all, fraud also needs a reason). In life, most of the scams we encounter will use high-sounding reasons, such as the government secretly supporting them.

(2) After you take the bait, you will actually make a profit (if you are good at scamming, you will be given profits multiple times). Since you have gained benefits, you may donate to relatives and friends. If the word spreads from one person to ten, then ten to a hundred, then the scam can continue.

(3) The next line of development of voting machines (because new funds are needed to operate them) is that if we still do this in the 21st century, it would be easy to step on the sewing machine, so modern voting basically starts with friends and family.