immediately demand their money, and in turn cause the promoters to flee the jurisdiction sooner than planned (assuming they intended to eventually abscond in the first place), thus causing the scheme to collapse much faster than it ultimately would have been closed down by the police if their investigation had simply been permitted to run its course. Actual losses are extremely difficult to calculate. The amounts that investors thought they had were never attainable in the first place. The wide gap between "money in" and "fictitious gains" make it virtually impossible to know how much was lost in any Ponzi scheme. Similar schemes Pyramid scheme A pyramid scheme is a form of fraud similar in some ways to a Ponzi scheme, relying as it does on a mistaken belief in a nonexistent financial reality, including the hope of an extremely high rate of return. However, several characteristics distinguish these schemes from Ponzi schemes: In a Ponzi scheme, the schemer acts as a "hub" for the victims, interacting with all of them directly. In a pyramid scheme, those who recruit additional participants benefit directly. Failure to recruit typically means no investment return. A Ponzi scheme claims to rely on some esoteric investment approach, and often attracts well-to-do investors, whereas pyramid schemes explicitly claim that new money will be the source of payout for the initial investments. A pyramid scheme typically collapses much faster because it requires exponential increases in participants to sustain it. By contrast, Ponzi schemes can survive (at least in the short-term) simply by persuading most existing participants to reinvest their money, with a relatively small number of new participants. Crypto Ponzi scheme Cryptocurrencies have been employed by scammers attempting a new generation of Ponzi schemes. For example, misuse of initial coin offerings, or "ICOs", has been one such method, known as "smart Ponzis" per the Financial Times. Most schemes have a low recovery rate with investors losing their funds permanently. The novelty of ICOs means that there is currently a lack of regulatory clarity on the classification of these financial devices, allowing scammers wide leeway to develop Ponzi schemes using these pseudo-assets. Also, the pseudonymity of cryptocurrency transactions and their international nature involving countless jurisdictions in many different countries can make it much more difficult to identify and take legal action (whether civil or criminal) against perpetrators. The May 2022 collapse of TerraUSD, a stablecoin propped up by