Almost every scam gives money to the early adopters. It would only be a ponzi if they claimed that there was some kind of a business/mechanism that’s generating the revenue when it’s actually coming from the fools downstream from you. Usually it’s something like a guaranteed double digit interest on your money. You put the money in and receive the reward (from other people’s money) and that’s a strong psychological trigger to put more money in. You just saw it work and you have the check from the ponzi to prove it!

If you just have a large amount of a worthless asset and you convince other people to buy it on the market to pump the price up (mainly via social media and “influencers” these days) and then you dump it at the top then you have a…