# Gavin Andresen
# 2014-06-16 15:18:07
# https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=609411.msg7344745#msg7344745

I haven't been paying to the whole "cloud hashing" thing, but it seems to me a great cover for an old-fashioned Ponzi scheme. @p{par}

1. Take investors BTC, "buy" gigahashes of mining. @p{brk}
2. Pay them back for a while using new investor's BTC. @p{brk}
3. Once you've got enough investors, take the BTC and run. @p{brk}
  (maybe claim "oops, sorry, got hacked") @p{par}

I'm not saying CEX.IO is a tarted-up Ponzi scheme. I have no idea. @p{par}

I'm just asking how everybody who is giving them money knows that they aren't a Ponzi. Or aren't selling the same hardware twice or three times, operating a kind of 'fractional reserve' system (that will eventually fall apart). @p{par}

Excuse me in advance if this has been discussed and I'm just missing something (e.g. a variation on Greg Maxwell's exchange auditing scheme might work: e.g. "they publish all the blocks found and an auditable merkle tree of all customers and how much hashing power each has"). @p{brk}