zlacker

>>donsup+(OP)
YC invested in what was clearly an outright fraud? Or did they pivot do hard that nobody noticed?

>>dmitry+A3
A poor decision does not equal fraud.

>>devout+94
It does when the poor decision is to run a ponzi scheme

e: ah, only acting as the middlemen between the end user and a ponzi scheme. Probably that'll give them and their VC backers enough plausible deniability to avoid being arrested.

>>Khoth+fb
This wasn’t a Ponzi scheme.

A Ponzi scheme is an investment fraud that pays existing investors with funds collected from new investors.

https://www.investor.gov/introduction-investing/investing-ba...

>>devout+Qm
It's obfuscated by splitting the components into multiple cryptocurrencies with multiple actors, but that's what's going on. People were staking UST for 19.5% returns, and if you cut through the fluff, those returns came from later people putting their money in hoping to get those returns themselves. (and because UST was a stablecoin those returns were (ostensibly) in dollars, not just inflation of the coin value)

>>Khoth+wo
You just described banks. Banks take deposits & lend the money out at a higher rate. This is what anchor protocol was all about. Pay high interest, and lend at even higher interest.

>>devout+6p
Except anchor was lending at lower rates.