Bitcoin Forum

Every single business following the HYIP model has turned out to be a ponzi scam.

I would think that a "legitimate" HYIP would be possible however. Think of the real estate business. If you have a rental property as an investment, it is possible to make a 8-15 percent annual profit. A business could buy a property and sell shares in the property which would return a weekly, monthly, or yearly profit. Shares could be resold once bought, hence leaving your initial investment intact.

There are also professional stock and forex traders who are able to earn a living by trading in these markets. A business could be set up that allows people to pool their investments together into a single fund. Successful traders would be given the option of using the funds in this pool in addition to their normal funds, and if they choose to do so, they would be entitled to a percentage of their profits. Therefore, a trader who has $100,000 of his own funds and normally makes $50,000 a year would be able to gain access to $1,000,000 of investors' funds and make an additional $500,000 a year. Even if he was entitled to just 10 percent of profits, the trader would now be making $100,000 a year and the investors would get $450,000. Everyone wins.

Finally, there is also an opportunity to profit by giving out loans. This includes mortgage loans. A business could be set up that allows investors to pool their money together and give out loans. The profits would come from the interest that is paid once the loan is repaid.

I can think of other business models that might be able to pool investors' funds and give out the profits in a weekly, monthly, or yearly manner. Life insurance, for example.

Got any other ideas?

All of the things you speak of are already a reality but most people don't called them HYIPs. HYIP is just a euphemism for ponzi.

Hedge funds aim to yield high returns for its investors but you would never catch anyone calling one a HYIP.

There are investments with more risk that also yield high returns. Just beware of anything calling itself a HYIP.

HYIPs tend to imply that there is some kind of guarantee that you will actually earn high yields on your investment. It is simply not possible to guarantee that high yields will be achieved all, or even any of the time.

There are several investments that offer high yields, and that have, in the past gained a lot (offered "high yields") over time.

It should be noted that the more you expect to earn on your investment, the more risk you are taking. 

zopa.com? lendingclub.com ?
peer2peer lending is a thing already.

HYIP has almost become a synonym for Ponzi scheme. I think the reason is the high loss rate of even those HYIP that weren't originally planned as Ponzis. Especially in day trading the vast majority of trader looses capital over longer periods of time. Those who are successful do not need to raise capital, because they already made enough (note that markets do not provide unlimited liquidity for trading). So there's a negative selection process going on: Traders that are offering HYIP to finance trading are most likely those that are unsuccessful.

Simple investment rule: High proposed return on investment = high risk.

That is why they are called HYIPs, how on earth are they going to make so much return in short time?

Legitimate HYIPs ? ;D
if successful trader get capital from HYIP "investor" and use it for daily trading, will investor get back their money if that trader suffered losses from trading?
HYIP is still HYIP, they aim greedy people by offered them crazy and high profit in short term
and run after that ;D

because in the long run you always lose with HYIPs.  When I was younger I put small bits of money in them and short term I made money but long term because I got greedy I lost it all.

Huge returns are not sustainable in the long run.  That and people just get greedy.

Think of it this way, a true HYIP would have a fee structure like a hedge fund where they take a cut of the profits and none of the losses.{1}  I don't think many people would contribute their coins to such a high fee scheme when there are so many other, usually illegitimate, funds.  It's a classic case of scammers destroying any hope of a legit market, which because of its fees, really isn't that attractive.

Good Luck!


{1} In the US most hedge funds are run on the 2 and 20 fee structure, 2% of assets and 20% of investment gains.

It is more like that high yield investments carry a lot of risk and with risk there is a greater chance of loosing your principle. Over the long run it is very unlikely that you will earn more then 7% above inflation which is about what stocks have earned in the past.

As said by someone else, HYIPs were just a jazzy name given to Ponzi schemes. The only way they could offer you such high returns was due to the fact that they used new investors funds to pay off the older investors. Check any decent P2P lending / investment site, such as Zopa - they don't offer high returns but they give a hell lot more than what a bank would and the listings are backed by credit checks.

I have never heard of a legitimate one in the bitcoin world. Once we get through the wild west stages of bitcoin you might see some pop up, but for now if it seems to good to be true........

Very well said.
It seems that this HYIPs programs become very famous, fast and easy way to scam people and earn good money for admins only.
Many people are financially despair so it's always enough victims for such SCAMS.
i tried my luck in a few HYIPs and lost my money in each of them.

I was very unlucky with HYIPs, every time I entered in, I was too late and in the final stage of the scam...

That happens to the vast majority of "customers" in these scams. As the bit coin economy grows we will see some less risky investment opportunities pop up. For now I think it is best to keep your bit coin in cold storage.

I do believe that is the entire point of them. You weren't "unlucky", it was by design.

Yes, only the first ones are winners and are payed by the remaining people.
But even if you are among the first, the website can be taken down just because of some big investor which brakes the ponzi scheme.

This is how most HYIPs operate. They promise returns that are larger then what is realistic. Then they lure in customers by paying the early customers/investors the crazy rates. Once enough money has been invested in the HYIP, the backers will typically disappear, along with their customers' money.  >:(

As someone who used to lend on Prosper, I'd advise to stay away.  There's a reason a lot of these people can't get loans from banks.

I think your idea is very good  ;D
if there are HYIP like that, i would like to join

But, in reality. all HYIP i can find is ponzi / pyramid scheme


That's true HYIP works like that, similar to Ponzi / Pyramid Scheme. It's classic HYIP trick

Do banks even loan money out to regular people anymore? Besides home mortgages of course.

My bank gave me a business line of credit without me asking for it.  Like $50K

I don't know, mine constantly is offering me tons of lending products I have absolutely no need for, whether I want them or not. I swear they've opened an overdraft line on 3 different checking accounts, and a HELOC I didn't ask for. God knows how they got me a HELOC without a single signature on my part, or even an appraisal of my property's price . . . :\

Seconded. Prosper was a pretty decent way to invest early on but the lack of ability to get judgements and ever increasing default rate chased me from it.  The bit coin lending platforms seem too similar for comfort.

That would not be a HYIP in the first place. HYIP is a type of Ponzi scheme, that is "an investment scam that promises unsustainably high return on investment by paying previous investors with the money invested by new investors" according to the Wikipedia article about it.

HYIP stands for high yield investment program. Any alternate definition written on the wikipedia page is merely the view of the latest wikipedia editor given historical data. I'm not saying that you're going to find a legitimate HYIP, just that re-defining an acronym is an incredibly stupid thing to do, especially considering its an acronym.

Well, one might say that Maddoff's fund was a legitimate HYIP :-)
Depends what one considers legitimate.

I know what HYIP stands for, and now this acronym has turned into a euphemism being used in place of Ponzi scheme and meaning a special case of it. In short, the word has by now lost its meaning defined by the words it abbreviates.

Whatever what HYIP mean for everyone.

We need a legit HYIP (hedge fund) for Bitcoin (or any crypto).

In what universe could Madoff's scheme ever be considered legitimate? :P

Normally the HYIPs are not called HYIPs at the beginning,  they end up losing money then realize they are trapped in HYIPs. We should know how HYIPs work and get away form them. High yield = high  return.

Some HYIPs do not even pretend to be anything but just that, i.e. pyramid scams.

legitimate and HYIP doesnt really go together very often. If someone could make a huge percentage of profit doing some kind of trading, arbitrage, etc. why should they share it with investors. Even if they only had a small amount of capital to start with, if they are making such huge returns on their investments it won't matter in the long term.

I am not sure if even Madoff would consider his scheme legitimate.  ;D
He just thought he could get away with it.

Two things:

1) You need to have high yield business model to be able to offer high interest rate to attract capital.
2) Business with sound model can get loan cheaper from bank and private equity firms.

You must be talking about pre-2009, that was when the default rates at Prosper were through the roof.  After they came out of SEC registration in Fall of 2009, loan quality was greatly improved and defaults lowered dramatically.  Today, I'm making a little over 12% there now, a damn sight better than a savings account!

12% after you factor in the default rate or before?

How does lender go after deadbeat in a peer to peer lending platform?

I am sure that the 12% is before factoring in the default rate. The expected value of all prosper loans is much lower then this, but still better then a savings account.

The lender does not go after a borrower who does not pay their loan (with prosper), but prosper will first attempt to collect with their internal collection department, and if the loan falls a certain amount behind then it will be sent to a collection agency.

Yes this is an old topic, but I want to add my 2 cents.

All of the high yield investment plans on this here chat board are all frauds BECAUSE...the morons who advertise such things here have no idea how to manage money and certainly couldn't guarantee the yields they promise any other way than through a Ponzi scheme.  Yes it is certainly possible to earn high rates of return on your money.  It just isn't going to happen by throwing your hard-earned BTC at anyone advertising here.  This board is full of cretins and idiots and scammers.  Anyone with a legitimate plan to earn a high % ROI is going to do it through legitimate channels.

You just havent observed enough lol.

Theres plenty around you on this forum, and it comes in many forms. Some are more obvious then others like HYIP. But, the mining game itself can be viewed as one, since we see all the past "legit" ones collapse. Eg: BFL, etc.

they are all legit actually, if you can evade them at the exact time, they usually don't close on launch, there is a small windows where you can get profit and they get nothing from you, but it's not that easy as it seems

I forget, but if you check out the gambling section of the investors side or something, there was something called the watchers list.

That list was filled with "supposedly" legit sites that held more then 5 months, which some did. But that thread was all based on that op`s ponzis which raked a ton of bitcoin I bet.

Bottom line: dont leave money on the table, if you cant afford the loss.

well the big problem here is :
when they open a new hyip the first members will roi and get profit,these will change as soon someone gets the first month is when the big deposits come....

all people wanna get double ,tripler their money,that happen to first as i mentioned who enter after pay that bill..

hyip will only be legitimate when the offer lets say 90% of banks interests,soo suppose a bank offer 3%montly to 100000 dollars soo the admin should set the interest to 2.7% montly and take the 0,3%to manage the website ,protect it and reinvest the rest for him,big problem is that is hard to find someone that hold the feeling to get such ammount in hands and allow it to return to owners with interest.


These should be the way HYIP should run with a safe place,some bank that has an ammount fixed,otherwise it wont happen,nowadays hyip that dont credit the money daily get no interest on it,if someone opens a hyip and says all money will be paid in a 1 month interest after deposit no one would support it soo is a market dead because the huge eyes that who run get and run away with others money without any regret of that.

High returns are one thing, impossible returns are another.
I am always skeptical when schemes promise to double your bitcoins in a few weeks / months.  ;)

I must admit the title of this thread made me do a double take.  The problem is that in order to make the kinds of returns promised by hyip, you have to work hard.  Its perhaps possible to earn these returns sometimes, but your average person will not have the skills needed.  Most of the good investments such as hedge funds require a lot of money to join.

So I guess it depends on your capital and your risk tolerance.  Generally speaking the higher the return, the more risk you will face.

legitimate HYIP

holy fuck, dude..please educate yourself little bit, read at least twice this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-yield_investment_program and this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ponzi_scheme and stop asking such dumb questions..

 ::) ::) ::)

Why are there no legitimate money trees? They're scams because they're scams. Nothing is sustainable forever and even good businessman will eventually lose money or have a failed investment. If someone was really good at their job investing they would just keep doing it themselves, but when people ask for others money that's when you know there's something up.

Well, if it's legitimate, then I wouldn't even consider it to be HYIP in the first place. Fact is, there is no such thing as an investment that pays so well with such a high yield usually within short time span without any concrete business plan. It's a game where the winner is decided by who gets in early and who gets out late.

It's a game if there is massive income from the starts. in todays reality, majority of newly established bitcoin ponzi vanished within 24hours without single payment, just because they are not able to attract enough people to make first payout:)

I have myself lost money to various HYIP schemes several times in the past. The most notable one was with Bux.to. Lost close to $600 in that scam (at that time, my two months salary). Even recently, I lost money in HYIPs. I invested some BTC30 in to LTC-Global, and it all vanished. Had I converted those coins to fiat back then, I would have had at least $25,000 with me.

My advice would be to stop being a spanking retard and don't enter into scams that you know are scams.  But thank you for sharing your idiocy with everyone here. There is not enough of that around this board.

I have always found investing to be a tradeoff between risk and upside potential. An actual HYIP would be an extremely risky bet with little chance of return. However if it does pay-off it is a big reward. Anything more than a tiny investment of capitol is foolish. On the opposite end of the spectrum is a low risk / low yield investment. These are safe bets that will likely pay off with a small gain. the bulk of ones wealth is better stored in this kind of investment.

Here at bitcointalk a HYIP is a scam. Ask the issuer where they are based and licensed? Mom's basement? If you are handing money over to an unlicensed and unregistered business you are not an "investor", you are a "mark".

Simply Hype is Ponzi scheme.If you look europe now,greece bailout,massive printing,it is in fact one big ponzi scheme

Any legal investing is also contain risk,higher return is higher risk

if you look altcoin market,with all thatshitcoins it is also kind of hype

Some people just need more reassurance from other peoples input lol.

Despite the obvious, they`ll still throw money at it, the recent one I saw was that "investors watch list" thread, then got vanished after 4-5 months being up.

I don't know why people are adding legitimate into HYIP's. Basically there is no legit HYIP to start with coz they will eventually end up scamming people.

A real HYIP scheme would not work since it would easily become overextended when the rate of withdrawals exceeds the rate of deposits
The reason that Madoff was able to keep his running for example is because they were able to convince users to retain assets and due to its famous reputation could keep a steady inflow of new investors to pay out old ones.

That said real estate and hedge funds take advantage of chaotic environments and leverage their equity to maximize profits through trading other peoples assets so its possible for them to have great years perhaps not every year but consistently enough to get 10-15% in some years using a trading strategy.

Rent and property management is an example of this as long as the housing market remains stable there is a solid return on income from managing them, that is why their are really rich people who manage trailer parks especially from criminals etc to make a good buck.

Ponzis can be in multiple forms, but theres more obvious then others.

I know its a bit off but when you go to school, youre also buying into somewhat of a ponzi since the job is never guaranteed, but has better odds then an actual scam.

No, getting an education is not a Ponzi scheme.  Apparently you wouldn't know anything about that, however.

By this way, life is also a Ponzi scheme... No matter what you try, you are born to die!

No legitimate hyip in this world, just method of scamming people.

Just invest in reasonable things, like hold bitcoin, gold, and stock.


LOL I like this quote :D

The answer is simple: If you are running a HYIP investment and gather a lot o money from people there is too much temptation to grab it all and just run.
And that is exactly what is happening each and every time. The only way it to design a service or method of protecting gathered funds, something like time lock would be fine idea.

HYIPs can never be legitimate because they're easy and everything easy comes with a god damn twist. The ones who buy in sooner and leave get a good profit and most of those who are kinda late, end up losing their investments. Its better to leave your bitcoins in your pocket than toss them up to the pockets where they don't deserve to be.

One of the software developer company, asked so many consumers to invest in their software developing program, few of the clients trusted them and invest their money hoping that the application software will go into the market and yield high profit, ultimately during the last recession period, they tend to close the software company and unfortunately all the investors lost the money, can we call this type of investment as HYIP's ? or your loss is similar to this scenario.

Some IPOs are legit. Sometimes is the only way for project makers to get funded. For example I trust that the 6 million that Maidsafe developers got are in good hands and they will deliver an amazing product.
If you do your research you should be safe. If you don't know 100% where are you putting the money and the people behind it just dont do it.

There is, called money printing, but only exclusively provided for the banking class. Or, if you are very close to your banker friend, you should also have some HYIP to invest in

there is a form of money printing in the cryptoworld, it is called make your own altcoin with your own blockchain and premine it, then repeat, it's probably not working anymore like in th eold way, but it was very akin to what banking do

HYIP the bad is after put in the money ald starting got interest.
so when the amount big, the owner not do anything for that, only can run.

My idea is must start a lock-in period like one month. (use the money and time to do anything which can earn money start-up)
starting month percentage is lesser. second month will be more.
Then the percentage different every month due to performance.
There are not such script right? i seen a lot HYIP script w/o this.

If private fund raising can do like this will be better.
Online only have "hyip" program to do as person.
like become personal fund manager.

If one investment do successfully then can become starting pioneer like facebook, google etc.
how to become "legit", also a problem too.

HYIPs are made to don't last forever, they run it while they can, while there is money being deposited to continue the system. Without the big number of deposits every new day this system isn't sustainable, because the income come exclusively from new investors to pay the old ones.

The only way to make it work is if the HYIP owner is a master, genius of trading and gambling. He can take the investors money and double, triple it fast to pay them back and make the scheme survive, but I think there isn't anyone able to do it.

The interest rates could be lower, a more reasonable amount, but this way the HYIP owner doesn't get enough attention from most investors he focus, those who wants fast profit.

never trust about HYIP
hyip only ponzi scheme, you can get profit another member, if not new member HYIP site can scam
so all HYIP only wait to scam

Just curious how HYPE can be legit. Imagine guys website which tells you that they are legally registered HYPE and they are going to scam you if you invest money. If you want high profit with invest in online website, better to change your mind and go out and start work. Everyone likes easy or free money but no one likes working, ironic, without hard work we can't develope. So no one will give you legally and guaranteed 15% or higher of invested money, just ask yourself how can they cover fees, give you money and profit for them.

I try to be pretty careful when making generalized statements. I've never actually SEEN an HYIP that wasn't a scam, but I have most certainly not seen them all. So as for whether or not some of them may be legit, I can't say, but I wouldn't risk money with any of them.

Nearly any form of earning income, whether online or offline, will take time and effort, and possibly some spending money. If you see significant value being offered without a significant expenditure of time or effort, be wary.

You have the answer to your puzzle,every high yielding investment program is a sort of ponzi schemes which promises high returns and the fact remains that none of that can be sustainable .Never trust anyone that promises to give you any astronomical returns for your investments than the banking investment returns,people who are greedy usually falls for these kind of frauds. Can you provide one good example of a good HYIP you have invested in,i bet you cannot.

Because if they were able to produce something of real value they would not have to be a HYIP in first place.

Dumbass signature campaigner bumped this ancient topic, and nobody notices?  You guys, hopefully,  are going to get your posts deleted.   As if the answer to this isn't obvious by now.  Please take a look at the date of the OP and someone please lock this topic.

The answer is very simple. Because there is no guarantee to profit in hyip and in hyip you can get a loss. That's why there is no legitimaten the hyip business. Because it will only hurt you I prefer to stay away from hyip because it can make you addicted and loss