You don't have to listen to me or another expert saying that FTX was a ponzi scheme. Literally just listen to SBF himself. He described his business as a ponzi scheme. If that isn't obvious then I don't know what is. This is Coffeezilla's summary of SBF on the Odd Lots podcast with financial analyst Matt Levine
> Literally just listen to SBF himself. He described his business as a ponzi scheme
1. you should actually listen to the podcast, or at least skim the transcript[1], rather than trusting some second hand account by some youtuber. In the podcast, he's describing an abstract token that offers no utility, not FTT and certainly not the exchange itself.
2. At least from skimming the whitepaper for FTT, there's at least a plausible business model (eg. through exchange fees). That's not to say it's not a ponzi scheme, because many ponzi schemes claim they have a plausible business model, but that's different than literally describing yourself as a ponzi scheme. That would require you to put out a whitepaper that's like "we fully expect this token/company to make zero money and all profits to earlier investors come from later investors".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sucxhGOv9ww