Hmm, though this may be true it's dissapointing to see Gavin associating bitcoin with the word ponzi. That's something we really need to get away from.
Gotta call a spade a spade. Many of these guys just keep selling shares for hashing and may or may not upgrade their hashing. I've heard how the PR goes for these outfits in that they gear it towards the newer people entering the ecosystem that are pretty green in terms of the broad understanding of what's going on. It all sounds easy because you just send a wallet address along w/ your fiat payment to the company and you start collecting dust daily or weekly instead of having to link up a checking account or making wire transfers to some exchange that they know nothing about. The payments obviously keep getting smaller over time but unless there's upgrades, the show is coming to an end. One of the main things here is that users don't really know how mining works and then w/o upgrades, the coffin is sealed.