Limited Hangout Pyramid - a take on satoshipyramid.com

Let's not argue about morality or ethics of gambling in general, or even of just this particular project. Those arguments are usually heavily biased and each person will be heavily influenced by their own set of beliefs, circumstances, etc. I would like us to instead focus on a more critical approach to this, one involving just a little research and perhaps some basic psychology. Let's just ask ourselves some questions, look into some things, and see what we come up with.

1st let's get this out of the way. There are so many arguments, red flags, around this that I really don't understand people using non-arguments like "it's illegal in most countries". WTF does that even mean? What happens when "most countries" declare crypto illegal? Are we gonna stop using, talking about it? Here we are, talking about crypto and how it's supposed to bring freedom, independence, disengagement from governments and institutions, yet we make arguments based on rules imposed by those same institutions. It's laughable. So just stop using that non-argument. You sound ridiculous.

2nd, for those shilling this game, just because you got paid out and now "trust" the guy doesn't mean he's legit. There's absolutely 0% guarantee that next person coming in is getting paid too. I understand that everyone's been made aware of the risks here, but saying "seems legit, he's paying out" is laughable. Ofc he's paying out, that's how every pyramid scheme starts. I mean here we are, talking shit day and night about exchanges, not your keys not your coin, custodial, crypto is trustless, etc, but now all of a sudden we're all-in in the game whose primary functioning component is trust. WTF happened to everyone? Seems like there's a whole lot of people swallowing this shit. Which brings me to:

3rd. Why I think so many are buying this shit and also why I think they shouldn't. This game's "success" is due to its "apparent transparency". It never works if you just put it out there. You're getting shut down and labelled a scammer immediately. So you have to be "transparent". And it's "just a coincidence" that it turns out to be clever marketing as well. Many have bought it "Well at least he's open about it". That's why "Limited Hangout Pyramid". You earn credibility by divulging the obvious, as once you do people assume you frank, honest. But let's take a closer look at this transparency, or actually the apparent lack thereof. I feel like the next, and probably the biggest, selling point was the claim made in this article where it's stated that all collected fees would be used to fund the development of Bitcoin Cash. This practically means the game is not made for profit but for the benefit of the entire community. However, I feel like if that was the true intent then the person behind this project would go above and beyond to reassure the community about the exact handling and distribution of those funds. By looking at guyfawkesfp's reddit post history it's clear that he's not shy about shilling his own projects. There are a lot of low effort meme posts where he just shills his own app. But what I find more concerning here is that there are also some technical, analytical posts, and the account itself is started with a same post across 4 different subs, shilling its own project by even publishing its whitepaper. So it's clear there's more than enough know-how on how to publish and apply this "funding BCH development" feature, so the obvious question is why that hasn't been done? It is also very conveniently left out of the official rules of the game, and this community question posted by u/wtfCraigwtf remains unanswered as well. So it comes down to just another selling point.

Next up is this: "I'm trying to help everyone out. I'm reaching out to many people, trying to give them free money, and all they do is turn their back." GTFOH !! No one is giving away free money, and there's even less people turning their backs on someone giving them free money. Here, watch this:

Hey u/guyfawkesfp can I have some of that free money you're giving away. I won't turn my back I promise. In fact here: bitcoincash:qzrm6mavfnhmqhddh7aaj9wt3s35jrsqt5j0x2s0ee

I don't know how everyone missed this BS or I just witnessed the biggest collective brain fart r/btc has ever had, but if that's not a big giant red flag I don't know what is. I have almost 20 years experience with online betting and I've seen it all, ponzis, scams, exit-scams... This one has all the red flags. Even the way how "they" suddenly switch and start acting all corporate with copy/paste answers to their basically customers now:

Sorry for the confusion and thank you for your patience, we just added this to the "rules/disclaimers"

SatoshiPyramid deposits are made into a secure cold wallet system. For security reasons payouts may take up to 12 hours to process.

Next up, and it's another big one - undistributed funds. No mention anywhere on what happens to those funds. By the rules of the game, as presented, it's even possible that when the game ends the amount of undistributed funds exceeds the sum of all payouts by substantial margin. Is this more than likely scenario covered anywhere in the rules or even mentioned in the shill article? Of course not. There have been attempts by some people to interpret the rule 9 "The game ends when the current pyramid level has been pending for 8640 blocks (about 60 days). At which point a new Satoshi Pyramid game will begin, and payments will be forwarded to the next game of Satoshi Pyramid players. All outstanding players from the expired game will have officially lost, and will not receive any payments." as providing an explanation to this question, with those funds being transferred to the new game (and do what exactly???). However this rule simply means exactly what it says. Once new game starts, all new payments/deposits will be transferred to the new game. This has been one of the more confusing issues here, and several people inquired what it actually meant. You would think the guy would chime in at some point in the last 5-6 days to offer some clarification on this hugely confusing and controversial issue. But has he done so? Again, of course not.

Now comes rule 11 "By depositing funds into the deposit address, you agree that you are 100% responsible for any intended, unintended, expected, or unexpected consequences that may occur as a result of playing this game - including the total loss of funds for any and all reasons". Read that again. You're actually agreeing that it's 100% your responsibility if you lose all your money for any reason. Like scam and such.

Now, it is possible that this guy has simply just created a game, didn't really see it gaining traction, and somehow left the most basic, glaringly obvious issues overlooked and unchecked, and now he's scrambling, figuring things out along the way. Do I actually believe that? Not for a second. And with all the red flags presented here I think neither should anyone else. If you still do, ultimately consider this:

The game is dead. It has generated some activity in the first week or so, but for the past three days it's had a whooping total of 16 transactions. And when/if the new game starts it will only be worse. Everyone will try to get in early, as those who do will be "guaranteed" to get payed, so all the action will be early on. Possibly even in the first few blocks (it could get really ridiculous and have almost all of the transactions in the 1st block, and then it all just comes down to the "first seen" rule). After that the game will simply die and there will be no action for 2 months. How does any project that generates activity for just a couple of days and then sits dormant, dead for 60 days, how does that 10x the BCH userbase, not to mention the price, which is the supposed goal of this project? There's no adoption here, no price rise. The only people this game will onboard are gullible "a fool and his money are soon parted" types. Even if you believe this guy has his best intentions at heart, the game as it is, in it's current state, is a net negative for the BCH ecosystem.

There are ways that maybe some sort of game with a meme twist on pyramid scheme could work, adding some layers of strategy to the game by perhaps capping deposits, capping the total size of pyramid while incentivising players to complete the pyramid and start a new game (so a new game could start daily, or maybe even have multiple games complete in a single day, thus generating a consistent blockchain activity), and so on.. But that's another topic. All those things could've already been included in the game if it were carefully thought out. However, with all the vagueness in the rules and non-addressal of the most obvious and most alarming issues raised by the community, I feel like the "careful thinking" part of the equation was directed elsewhere.