Old but Good

 An old but good web site - from which the above "How to Spot a Pyramid Scheme" is taken - is here, about stopping the Amway scam. 

Is Bitcoin Really Money?

Image credit: www.wired.com

Unless you lived under a rock for a few years, you have heard of electronic currency known as Bitcoin. I accept that if, for some reason, everybody tomorrow (governments included) accepted Bitcoin as money, it would become money. But, I wish here to show how the Bitcoin does not fail to be money due to certain reasons that are often claimed against it, but does fail to be money in one, very crucial, aspect.

Why bother showing how some arguments against Bitcoin fail? The reason is that people are likely to believe that, if the arguments they are aware of that prove Bitcoin isn't real money fail, then it follows that Bitcoin is money. This does not follow logically: indeed, salesmen and, for that matter, scam artists (one legitimately, the other not) are experts at overcoming one's natural objections by having "an answer to everything". But that only means the answer to the would-be buyer's most common objections. Just because those objections fail does not mean there aren't other serious reasons to suspect Bitcoin.

Nothing I write here is the economic equivalent of rocket science. But this, if anything, is all the more reason to write it: the more obvious the problem and the more people ignore it, the more urgent is to show what is going on.

Let us, then, start with some obvious objections that are not, in themselves, crucial -- in the sense that, while true, real money has the same issues.

1). Bitcoin is private currency. It is -- in the sense that it is not backed or issued by any government. This is important (as we shall see later), but, historically, most money was privately printed. Indeed, until the 19th century, most bank notes were notes issued by private banks, for example.

2). Bitcoin is fiat currency. That is, there is no way to limit the amount of money printed. But this is true for government-backed currency as well. The US dollar or the Euro, indeed all modern currencies, are not backed by gold or anything else. In theory the US could print as much money as it wishes. So why should Bitcoin, whose big selling point is that it is limited in quantity, in practice at least, be less money than the US dollar? If anything, it seems it should be more valuable than government-backed fiat money.

3). People speculate with Bitcoin, and its value can therefore fluctuate wildly. Why did Bitcoin's value skyrocket recently and then fall? Because, for psychological reasons, people began to believe its value would increase, increasing demand for it, and creating a self-fulfilling prophecy. Once people began to suspect Bitcoin is overvalued, they stopped buying and started selling -- creating another self-fulfilling prophecy.

Yet this, while true, is not in itself evidence that Bitcoin is illegitimate any more than the existence of bubbles in everything from tulips to internet startups is evidence, in itself, that the underlying commodity is worthless, and the bubble a pyramid scheme.  It is true that there were (and are) deliberate bubbles that are simply frauds -- pump-and-dump schemes for example -- and others that, in hindsight, seem absurd (the south sea bubble, the tulip bubble). But that in itself is not evidence Bitcoin is a scam.

4). Bitcoin is electronic money, and does not exist physically. This certainly be a problem in the sense that it may well be difficult to, say, stop people from counterfeiting it, but in fact most transactions with real money today do not involve the physical transfers of federal notes, let alone of gold coins. It is, in theory, possible to replace all paper money -- or gold coins for that matter -- with electronic equivalents.

The real problem is different: no government accepts Bitcoin as legal tender for the payment of debts, and in particular, of taxes. It is therefore not legal tender. In the USA, people must accept the US dollar as payment, and the government must accept it as payment of taxes. This is not so with Bitcoin. You must convert your Bitcoins to dollars before you can use them to pay any debt to the government.

You might be able to find someone to sell your Bitcoins to for dollars, or who will accept goods for Bitcoins which you can then sell for US dollars, but that is no different than anything else: it is not illegal for a private individual to accept anything whatever, including monopoly money, as payment. Indeed, James Boggs paints his own "money" and actually exchanges his "notes" for goods -- which led to him getting in trouble with the feds, but (correctly) he was acquitted of charges of counterfeiting, since no reasonable person would think his art is genuine federal bills, and he openly tells the person he gives them to that they aren't. But he can do it because people are willing to do it, considering his art collectibles, not because they have any legal duty to accept his bills.

Same with gold, in the "old days". It was not merely the fact that gold was rare that made it money, that is, legal tender (as opposed to making it valuable). It was that the government had to accept it (or at least its own gold and silver coins) as a payment of taxes. Similarly, to simplify, the original bank notes were notes the bank had to accept, legally, for gold or silver in the amount written on the note (which, to simplify, had then to be legally accepted by the government).

So Bitcoin is simply not money if by money we mean 'legal tender'. This does not mean -- in itself -- that it cannot be used for exchange, or is valueless. By definition almost everything that is valuable is not legal tender: corporate bonds, real estate, livestock, and so on. The government is not required to accept cows and oxen as payment -- livestock is not legal tender -- but this does hardly means that such commodities are not valuable: indeed, the term pecuniary comes from the latin pecus, cattle, and the Bible speaks of Abraham of being rich with cattle and livestock, despite the fact that he lived (if he existed in reality) about a thousand years before the invention of coined money.

But here, alas, is Bitcoin's second problem: if something is not legal tender, in order to be valuable, it should have some intrinsic value -- like livestock or bonds. Bitcoin does not. If something is neither legal tender that the government must accept, nor has intrinsic value, the only reason to exchange Bitcoin for legal tender or for goods with intrinsic value is the view that somebody else will want to do so in the future with our Bitcoins. They may -- or they may not. But they, too, would do so only if they think that someone in the future would be willing to do so with their Bitcoins.

Sounds problematic? It is. Bitcoin has, by definition of being "private" money, that, if this is not a contradiction in terms, the crucial bad property of fiat money -- no intrinsic value -- with the crucial bad property of commodities -- not being legal tender.

P.S.

It is true that, the way this post is written, it may seem that the government can mysteriously create value out of nothing -- as if the mere fact that something is legal tender makes it valuable. Let us say only that things are, of course, not as simple as that. How money, a medium of exchange with no intrinsic value, actually becomes a "store" for value, is significantly more complicated than this. If nothing else, this can be seen by the fact that governments certainly can, and often did, make their legal tender practically valueless with hyperinflation.

All I am claiming here is the opposite: that if something is not legal tender, it by golly better be intrinsically valuable if it is to be used as a store of value. Bitcoin is not. It is not different, in this respect, than (for example) Pokemon or Magic: the Gathering cards. Some people will pay a lot of money for such cards, or for rare tulips for that matter, but...

The argument between "bitcoiners" and economists remind me of the arguments between creationists and biologists: the bitcoiners spend most of their time arguing against fiat money, arguing in particular that fiat money, despite being legal tender, is valueless (as indeed, in particular cases, it is), just like creationists spend most of their time arguing against evolution, not for creationism.

But even if it were true that all fiat money is indeed valueless (as an experiment, ask the next person who tells you that to give you all the valueless fiat money in their wallet), this would not be any evidence Bitcoin is valuable -- just like, if evolution were disproved tomorrow, it would not be one whit of evidence that creationists asre correct.

"But I Made a Lot of Money" / "Look at all those Successful People!"

Credit: Wow Blog.

A common argument by MLMers is the argumentum ad populum -- so many people are successful, why won't you be? If they are all successful, can they all be wrong?

There are two reasons. First of all, they are likely simply lying. Statistics show that the average MLMer loses money and only a tiny fraction makes more than a part-time minimum wage job would have made with a lot more security and less effort.

But suppose they are correct? If so, then this is another reason to not join the MLM. As MLMs are pyramid schemes, where money is made by those in the top from those on the bottom, if many people are successful it merely means the pyramid's top -- joining it being the only way to make money -- is already full, so your chances of making money are even smaller than they already were.

I mean, would you buy a scratchcard from someone who told you to buy it because he already had won the grand prize in that batch?  

So the next time someone tells you to join an MLM because they made it big, tell them 'that's why I'm not joining!'.

Penn and Teller do it again.

Behind MLM blog notes that Penn and Teller see right through MLMs in the "Easy Money" episode of their scam-exposing show, titled, ahem, Bullsh*t!.

Highly recommended -- but slightly NSFW: language and, surpirsingly, sexual content.

You see, one of the MLMs they investigate is "pure romance", a company specializing in what their web site calls (wink wink, nudge nudge) "bedroom accessories".

Is Social Security a "Pyramid Scheme"?

Recently, there has been much talk in the news -- including by potential candidates for the presidency -- about whether social security is a pyramid scheme. The SSA's official response is here; numerous folks on the internet say it is lying.

The readers of this blog should be able to tell the answer. There are similarities between pyramid schemes and social security: the main one being that money is paid to those who are earlier in the system from those who are latecomers. But this in itself, however, is not enough to make something a pyramid scheme! Consider a private medical insurance company: on the whole, it pays those who joined years ago (and are now older and need more medical care) from the income (the premiums) of those who joined later (and are thus still younger and need less medical care). Does this mean medical insurance is a pyramid scheme? No.

Why? because, like social security and unlike MLMs, there is no need for the number of insurers to grow exponentially. There is no need for the number of young insured every generation to double for the medical insurance company to remain viable. If the ratio of workers to retirees -- or older to younger medically insured -- remained constant, or at least didn't rise above a certain level, then both social security or the medical insurance company could continue to go on indefinitely.

Does this mean there's nothing to worry about? Not quite.

Again, imagine, if you will, a medical insurance company founded in 1935 (like social security) with the motto, "we insure everybody!". Assume there were 10% of the population that was sick at the time. In theory it is quite possible for them to have charged enough premiums to cover the expenses of treating those who are sick. There is no logical necessity for the number of sick people in the population to increase. So long as it remains the same, or decreases, the company will remain viable.

But suppose the number of sick people, for some reason, rises a lot. That instead of 10% who are sick, you have 20% or 30% of the population who are sick. Naturally in this case the company might well go bankrupt if it continues to charge the same premiums and give the same benefits. But would that mean it's a pyramid scheme? No.

Replace "sick people" with "retirees" and "healthy people" with "workers" you see social security's problem: the constant growth of the ratio of retirees to workers. The reason? The increasing life expectancy. So, yes, social security cannot be funded in its current form indefinitely. It will probably have to increase premiums, or cut benefits, much like a private insurance company might. Or, perhaps more reasonably, it might raise the eligibility age for benefits -- after all, in 1935, the average life expectancy was barely above 60, so the number of those getting benefits was quite small.

Will Social Security reform in such a manner? Maybe. A further problem -- not applicable to a private medical company -- is that this might be politically difficult to do; unlike a private company, where the stock holders have an interest in maintaining long-term viability, with social security, anybody suggesting reform of social security will be crucified, no matter how reasonable the suggestion is. Imagine, if you will, a private insurance company which, for religious or other reasons, considers it an unshakable dogma that the premiums must not be raised and benefits must not be cut under any circumstances.

But if social security eventually fails, it will not be due to its pyramid structure (it is not a pyramid in that sense), but due to these problems -- much like a medical company might well fail if it continues to charge the same premiums and give the same benefits when 30% of those it insures are sick, as it did when 10% were.

MLMs, Magical Thinking, and Parasites

Quite apart from being the sure road to losing money quickly, MLMs are also dangerous for philosophical and moral reasons. They encourage magical thinking: the belief that the all-important thing for success is optimism, drive, and "being a go-getter", and that this is more important and will overcome all stubborn facts.

What's more, contrary to their claims that they are "independent" and "businessmen" unlike those nasty ol' Just-Over-Broke losers, in reality MLMers are parasites: they exploit natural feelings of friendship, kinship and trust for monetary gain (which is usually nonexistent in any case). They use their family's and friends' trust in them to sell them worthless stuff at high prices and get them into their "downline", and if any when they ever make it into the top, they make money mostly from the abuse of the trust of the people in their "downline": promising them that if only they keep giving them money, they will eventually "make it".

The magical thinking aspect of the MLM cults, their worship of 'success', has never been better exposed than in G. K. Chesterton's 'The Fallacy of Success' (in All Things Considered). The fallacy is that there is no such thing as 'success' in general: there is only success in some particular thing, from chess to carpentry. Those -- MLMers in particular -- who worship 'success' and go to workshops about how to be 'successful' always fail, since they never learn how to be successful in anything in particular, and are only there to learn how to act like people who are successful in something act. As Chesterton says (he was a very entertaining writer, so worth quoting in length):

These writers profess to tell the ordinary man how he may succeed in his trade or speculation—how, if he is a builder, he may succeed as a builder; how, if he is a stockbroker, he may succeed as a stockbroker. They profess to show him how, if he is a grocer, he may become a sporting yachtsman; how, if he is a tenth-rate journalist, he may become a peer; and how, if he is a German Jew, he may become an Anglo-Saxon. This is a definite and business-like proposal, and I really think that the people who buy these books (if any people do buy them) have a moral, if not a legal, right to ask for their money back.

If you are in for the high jump, either jump higher than any one else, or manage somehow to pretend that you have done so. If you want to succeed at whist, either be a good whist-player, or play with marked cards. You may want a book about jumping; you may want a book about whist; you may want a book about cheating at whist. But you cannot want a book about Success. Especially you cannot want a book about Success such as those which you can now find scattered by the hundred about the book-market.

You may want to jump or to play cards; but you do not want to read wandering statements to the effect that jumping is jumping, or that games are won by winners. If these writers, for instance, said anything about success in jumping it would be something like this: "The jumper must have a clear aim before him. He must desire definitely to jump higher than the other men who are in for the same competition. He must let no feeble feelings of mercy (sneaked from the sickening Little Englanders and Pro-Boers) prevent him from trying to do his best. He must remember that a competition in jumping is distinctly competitive, and that, as Darwin has gloriously demonstrated, THE WEAKEST GO TO THE WALL."

Quite true. What these books do -- and what MLM or other 'success seminars' do -- is, as Chesterton says:

In such strange utterances we see quite clearly what is really at the bottom of all these articles and books. It is not mere business; it is not even mere cynicism. It is mysticism; the horrible mysticism of money. The writer of that passage did not really have the remotest notion of how Vanderbilt made his money, or of how anybody else is to make his. He does, indeed, conclude his remarks by advocating some scheme; but it has nothing in the world to do with Vanderbilt. He merely wished to prostrate himself before the mystery of a millionaire.

Indeed so. Anybody who had ever been to one of those seminars can tells us how they are all about worshiping success -- either of the "big pin" in Amway or of a similar person -- not because those people tell them anything worthwhile about how to make money, but merely because those people made money.

Never mind that, as in the case of most such authors, the author himself made the money not in business, but in selling books and ridiculously overpriced "training programs" about success; never mind that the books and seminars are worthless, giving nothing more than rah-rah positive thinking and trite advice (like in the book above); all that matters is to attach oneself in some way to the millionaire, the "big pin", the "top upline", etc., out of the belief that if you try to act like them, you'll be like them -- a belief on par with the primitive tribesman's belief that if they eat lion's meat, they will be as strong as a lion.

As for the parasitic, trust-destroying nature of MLMs, their raising of selfishness to a positive good, their looking-out-for-number-one attitude, Andrew Oldenquist noted, in his book The non-Suicidal Society:

Running through most of these books is the idea that there is a quick and simple secret to success, a psychological gimmick that will bring you affection, sex, the esteem of others, and power over them. They are books for failures, for mice who would be supermen, and who want to be respected, obeted, and caressed without having to posses the character that makes one worthy of respect, obedience, or caresses. They parallel, in the realm of psychology and the spirit, the books whose gimmick for financial success is optimism, selling from your home, or buying a Cadillac for image before making your first detergent sale.

If everyone were to try to follow the advice in these books our society could not existed. A life wholly dedicated to dissimulation or manipulation can only exist within an environment in which the rest of us most of the time believe what we are earnestly told, act on principle and from group loyalties, and try to do our fair share... The manipulator must be carried on a sea of people who themselves to not lead that kind of life. The advice of the selfishness manuals is like a pyramid club or chain letter scheme in which only those who get in early are able to profit.

For MLMers, like for used-car salesmen, honesty, caring, and trust are merely instrumental, all sacrificed to the moloch of non-existent 'success'. It is better, if one is an MLMer, to appear honest, fair and non-exploitive than to actually be honest, fair, and non-exploitive. Hence, notes Oldenquist, the frenzied attempt in 'success' seminars and MLMs about marketing yourself, public relations, 'dressing for success', appearing to be making money as one loses one's shirt (so that it is easier to "sponsor" potential victims), and so on.

There is nothing new here, of course. 2500 years ago, there were already men who thought this way:

For what men say is that, if I am really just and am not also thought just, profit there is none, but the pain and loss on the other hand are umistakakable. But if, though unjust, I acquire the rputation of justice, a heavenly life is promised to me. Since then, as philosophers prove, appearance tyrannizes over truth and is lord of happiness, to appearances I must devote myself. I will describe around me a picture and shadow of virtue to be the vestibule and exterior of my house; bnehind I will trail [like] the subtle and crafty fox...

This is Adeimantus, in his challenge to Socrates in Plato's Republic.

Does this not describe perfectly the average MLM "big pin" and "go-getter" -- speaking of virtue, success, "family", etc., while demanding the downline miss another car payment as they go broke fast to enrich him?

Many Hedge Funds Are Just Pyramid Schemes -- Arthur Nadal's Valhalla Just the Latest

How many hedge funds are actually just pyramid schemes? How many hedge funds that aren't hedge funds are seriously cooking their books?

Nobody knows, but as the financial bust continues the shakeout among hedge funds continues. The investors in Valhalla Investment Partners woke up this weekend to discover that their high-return hedge fund was just another pyramid scheme. Arthur Nadel, the owner of Scoop Management has disappeared and apparently taken investors' remaining moneys with him according to various news reports. The FBI is investigating.

The Valhalla fund reported annual returns of 32 percent from 2000 through 2006 -- yeah, right. But as Warren Buffet says, when the tide goes out you can see who is swimming naked, and it is pretty clear that Valhalla's returns were bogus all along.

Another philanthropist (it's easy to be a philanthropist when you are giving away somebody else's money), Arthur G. Nadel did not let being disbarred for fraud, dishonesty, and misrepresentation keep him from becoming a high-flying hedge fund manager. Even minimal due diligence by investors would have picked up this enormous red flag, but apparently no investors took the time to do so and now they've lost their money.

The problem with hedge funds is that they are opaque, nobody knows what is going on with them in any given moment, and probably many of them are just pyramid schemes. If you have money in a hedge fund, now is a good time to think about taking it out, as the hedge fund shakeout may last some years.

Source: Bloomberg click here

Quatloos!

The Unlucky Lucky Madoff Investors

So you were lucky enough to receive money back from Bernie Madoff before his pyramid scheme collapsed? Think again.

The usual process in pyramid scheme recoveries is for the court-appointed Receiver to obtain all the financial records of the scamster, including bank accounts. Then, disbursements are traced to each recipient, who receive a friendly letter telling that they must send all the money they received back to the Receiver, so that the Receiver can pool the moneys together for distribution to all victims. Oh, and by the way, if the moneys are not returned then the Receiver will either sue the victim or obtain an order to hold the victim in contempt of court.

Upon receiving such a letter, the scam victim yells "Bloody Murder!" and immediately complains that they put more money into the scheme than they ever got back, and are still in the hole.

The Receiver just doesn't care. The money is not that of the victim, the money is that of ALL victims. The Receiver's job is to husband all the remaining assets of the scheme into the pool, and the assets include those that were paid out of the "lucky" victims before the scheme collapsed.

But what if the victim who received money doesn't have any ready cash on hand? Tough. The receiver can bring a lawsuit against the victim, obtain a judgment, and then liquidate the victim's other assets, such as houses, IRAs, etc., until the Receiver gets back all the money received from Madoff.

Brutal? Yes, but necessary to protect all victims. It doesn't make any sense than an investor who received money from Madoff a month ago should be in a better position than one who didn't. The strong powers of the Receiver to claw money out of "lucky" investors is also why there is actually the possibility of some recovery by all victims. In the Reed Slatkin scam, for instance, victims received upwards of 40% of their original investments back. In the Cash-For-Titles scam of the late 1990s, victims received over 70% of their money back.

Quatloos!

Madoff Scheme Investors Will Have To Give Back Even If Less Than Original Investment

Some of the victims of the Madoff pyramid scheme are about to receive more bad news -- If they received any money back from Madoff, the Receiver will want it back.

When a pyramid scheme collapses, the Court appoints a Receiver to husband and sequester all the assets of the scheme for the benefit of all investors. The Receiver will create a Victim's Fund, and all victims will receive a percentage of the Victim's Fund based on the size of their original investment.

The assets of the scheme include payments that the scheme made to others, including payments back to investors. If a Madoff investor received anything back from Madoff -- even if it was less than their original investment -- they will have to give that amount of money back to the Receiver, to be pooled with any other money and assets that the Receiver can find, and then these investors will get their percentage of the Victim's Fund.

If a Madoff investor refuses to pay the Receiver back, the Receiver can sue the investor and make the investor pay the costs and attorney fees of recovery, in addition to getting the money back. In some situations, the Court may also issue order to hold a recalcitrant investor in jail for contempt. "Resistance," as one might hear in a sci-fi B-movie, "is futile." It can also be very costly.

Charities are not exempt from disgorgement. If a charity received money from Madoff, it had better be prepared to give the money back. Charities may have exemption from income taxes from the IRS, but charities have no special exemption at all from Receiver-ordered disgorgement of what amounts to criminal proceeds. This will hit a lot of charities hard at this time when the economy is sharply down and charitable inflows have slowed from a mighty river to a miserly trickle.

Receivers and disgorgement are one of the more unpleasant things about pyramid schemes, and have the effect of re-victimizing the victims, sort of like having a rape victim testify at trial. But it is necessary to protect the rights of all investors, and not just those who received redemptions from Madoff.

The Madoff Scheme Isn't New -- Just Bigger

So people lost $50-plus billion to Bernie Madoff, so what? The only difference this time is that a few institutional investors, charities, and celebrities were caught up in this particular pyramid scheme.

Every year, pyramid schemes divest literally thousands of people of their life savings and put seniors on the street. Whether the victims are attracted through internet chat rooms or because the scam artist hoodwinked the local pastor into arranging investments for the benefit of the church, at any given time there are probably hundreds of pyramid schemes running somewhere in the U.S., and thousands more throughout the world.

Here at Quatloos! we have see and tracked many of these scams. For years, we tracked the Omega Trust & Trading scam, where people sent in $100 to buy "units" that were initially promised to give a $2,500 return, which eventually grew to where each unit was alleged to be worth $100,000. Indeed, even when the Omega scammers weren't paying off on the original scam, they ran a subsequent scam to sell "refund units", i.e., the units from other investors who had obtained refunds (although there were not any of these in actuality), and fleeced even more money out of their already-jilted investors.

Perhaps what makes the Madoff scam is the reputation of the main crook. Most pyramid schemes are run by those with no real financial education, background, or experience. Clyde Hood, who ran the Omega scam by contrast, was simply a retired electrician in Mattoon, Illinois. Madoff was the chairman of the NASDAQ from 1990 to 1993 -- no pyramid schemer has ever had such stellar credentials.

All the signs of a scam were there. The high but steady returns, the lack of transparency in how money was being made, and obscure auditors all raised red flags to those interested in knowing. And, indeed, it has since come out that there were at least one significant whistleblower, and maybe several.

But at the end of the day, the investors who lost everything have their own stupidity to blame. Sure, it is always easy to "blame the victim" for not discovering a scam, but this isn't why these investors were stupid. The reason the Madoff investors who lost everything were stupid is that they did not diversify their investments. There is simply no reason why any sane person -- or charity -- would have more than a small part of their investment with an obscure hedge fund like Madoff's. By following even minimal diversification rules, there is absolutely no reason why any Madoff investor should have lost more than 10% of their portfolio.

So why did investors throw caution to the wind and put everything with Madoff: Some combination of laziness and greed. These investors were getting a higher (albeit, paper) return with Madoff than on anything else they were investing in. So, instead of putting in the hard work to find other good investments, or accepting a lower return on their other investments for the sake of diversity, they instead put all their money with Madoff.

Mark Twain once wrote, "put all your eggs into one basket, and then watch it mightily." It's that second part that the Madoff investors missed, and if they weren't going to watch their investments like a hawk, they should have put them into one basket.

The way to avoid being scammed out of your portfolio is the same that it has always been: Diversify, diversify, and diversify. Decide how much is the most that you can lose on any particular investment, and then limit the investment to that percentage. It should be very rare that any particular investment, other than cash or government-backed bonds, should be more than 10% of a portfolio.

And that's not any sophisticated financial strategy; that's just common sense.

Talk about the Madoff scam on our new Madoff Scam discussion forum at http://quatloos.com/Q-Forum/viewforum.php?f=36