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7) But he didn't claim that UST was backed 1:1 by USD. He claimed, accurately, that it was backed by a bunch of volatile assets. It was very publicly clear that those assets might go down, and the rest followed. Again--I don't want to condone the behavior. But it's different.

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8) Luna was a case of mass enthusiasm, excitement, and--frankly--marketing and memes--driving people to believe in something which was going to falter according to publicly available information. That marketing was probably bad. But it wasn't the *same* type of bad as Theranos.

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Plus Token (PLUS) Scam - Anatomy of a Ponzi

9) Similarly, people will now accuse anything that people lose money on of being a ponzi scheme. Sometimes, there are real ponzis! Plus Token was a ponzi scheme: boxmining.com/plus-token-pon.

boxmining.com

"Plus Token" was a cryptocurrency Ponzi scheme disguised as a high-yield investment program. Investors were scammed over $3 Billion USD

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10) But most bad investments aren't ponzi schemes. Some are fraud, some are bad luck, and some are somewhere in between. Here are a set of investments that would have lost > 50% since the start of the year: 1) NFLX 2) LUNA 3) AMC 4) ARKK

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11) NFLX went up a lot and then down a lot, and is a real company. LUNA went up a lot and then down even more, and had a very transparent but also very bad problem. AMC went up a lot and then down a lot, because memes got more and less popular. ARKK is a combination of those.

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Replying to

I completely agree that calling everything a Ponzi (or scam, or fraud) is unhelpful, but as others have noted, you're obscuring the meaningful way in which LUNA/UST/ANC really was a Ponzi. Users piling in for high returns dependent on more future users joining...

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and

*Anything* built on the promise of 20% APY is essentially a Ponzi. That's use of the term, not abuse. (Esp when there's not even a pretense that 20%/yr of value is somehow being created; but really even if there is, since it's hard to think when such a free lunch would be legit.)

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er I think I disagree? sometimes 20%/yr is real. Not usually, but somtimes. BUT ALSO--the 20%/year was paid in UST in kind, not promised in BTC. That's different--it's consistent with hyperinflation

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I didn't say 20%: I said *promising* 20%, and yes I challenge you to find a case (outside >10%-inflation economies) where that's not based on Ponzinomics. Are you saying, the 20% was real b/c it was paid not in hard money but in their own stablecoin which might break its peg?