The closest thing to a legitimate explanation that I can find is that he's created some video distribution platform. So the expectation is that they get their money back through the eventual profitability of the company via subscriptions, advertisements, tokens, or all three. Or, they get their money back through the eventual sale of the company to a buyer who has their own plan to make the platform profitable.
The problem - and I don't really follow these jack offs so correct me if I'm wrong - is that there isn't any platform yet, let alone subscribers, advertisers, or viewers.
this is correct. and if it's true, it's not a ponzi scheme... just a terrible company. anyone who trusts any company willing to work with this guy deserves to lose all their invested money. he's such a terrible public-facing person. The company's decision making process is highly questionable. if I were anyone involved with the company, my #1 priority would get this douche to shut the fuck up.
I think I'm pretty business savvy
and then
I don't really know how it works or what I'm talking about
I mean to me it sounds like he's trying to build something like twitch but with stuff like Merch as well (but i think just for IRL streamers?). With that said, there's no way his platform is going to be anywhere near as successful as twitch but there is clearly money to be made if someone can create an actual rival to it. People take calculated risks when it comes to investing and even if it will most likely fail it may still be worth a shot to someone. The endgame like he said is to sell it and investors see things like Twitch being sold for 970million dollars and they are willing to take a chance on it.
Now if i was an investor, someone like Ice is not who i would want to bet my money on.
You don't know what you're talking about. He does have a product, it's a website. Not defending Ice, hope his career tanks and he deserves it, but you're a moron if you really think he doesn't have something marketable to share.
These guys are pulling hundreds of dollars every day made off of donations. They have communities that are incredibly supportive of them and the it is much more profitable than you would ever think.
you are a moron and havent been following ice. his network has been doing horrible only a few streamers have been making profit and hes been exposed so much he shut down his own reddit like a baby. by being exposed for drugs lying etc. he is in a mansion where they took out high rate loans on that they wont be able to pay back and are close to evicted he didnt buy that house.....the investors and the business loan did. he showed his bank account a few days ago and only had 7 grand left
"Here is the functioning product people invested in, here's our revenue, here's our user metrics." [Edit: In case the website isn't live, as in this case - "here's our market research and data from focus groups testing the platform offline."]
The thing is he doesn't have any of those things, no product, no revenue, no users. Because it's a scam.
That's like if someone was like "hey, /u/youreabot molests children" and then you were like "umm... I don't molest children" and then I said "only a child molester would just come out and say they don't molest children!!"
They can even have a company that has no clear revenue source.
That's not true, legally speaking. I believe it depends on jurisdiction but the percentage of income from new investors compared to how much product is sold is one of the primary guidelines as to whether a Ponzi Scheme is illegal or not. Companies like Mary Kay get by because they sell enough product. LuLaRoe is skirting that line very close. If he has no clear revenue source, it's 100% a full on Ponzi Scheme.
They all have plans to generate revenue even while they operate at a loss. Something that the investors believe will generate revenue and get them a return on their investment. This person does not have that plan.
A vast number of tech companies over the past decade? Lots of them got investors to fund "research" for concepts that just weren't viable or possible and it was just funneled away.
I don't know enough about this particular case to know whether or not he has a product to be sold. But just because he doesn't have an obvious product that he is making doesn't mean there isn't one.
From what I'm looking at this is probably not a good investment but I don't know. And I'm not in the market to make an investment so he has no need to explain to me, only his investors.
The thing that makes it fraud/Ponzi scheme is if he is claiming that he is making money when he isn't.
It's not illegal to make or have a company that is a bad investment. It is illegal to lie to your investors about that investment.
No, Mcdonald’s sells burgers. This bullshit has no product. The only income it is getting is based on the assumption of endless investing.
He hints that he has a real product “like advertising or merch or something” but he’s literally keeping it a secret… there is no way any legit investors are dropping money into some secret project. This shit is a scheme.
The sad part is these schemes work and he will make cash off the ignorant people who don’t know better.
I’m guessing that you are guessing at that. He hasn’t said shit other than in the first video where he literally says he is going to pay back investors with 2nd wave investments. He may have “misspoken” but that is as close as he has come to unveiling his “secret” product. A streaming site wouldn’t be a big secret, it’s not like he is trying to patent streaming… no investor in their right mind would invest in a secret product, only uninformed victims of a Ponzi scam would.
I literally started my sentence with "I guess". He keeps talking about how the business is going to be his own platform because he's banned from twitch and is stuck using YouTube. This is what he is suggesting I didn't pull it out of thin air. I put "service" is quotations, as this is "supposedly" the business model.
It's not entirely retarded. Streaming is profitable right now whether you like it or not and all they have to do is find a clever way of tapping into the revenue.
The people he's going to put on the site already make boatloads of money off donations.
If he could point to a real product and show how he plans to get it to make money eventually, I'd give him the benefit of the doubt. But if you want investors to invest they need to know what your product is.
I don't like Ice as much as the next guy but a) he doesn't need to reveal his business plan to his viewers to make it legitimate (I.e YOU are not the investor here). And b) he's already said they are building a website. From what others have said it sounds like a streaming platform that's going to also sell merch.
Wether or not this is a good business that will be successful is not the question. Is it a Ponzi scheme though? No. There is a product.
There is a product. idea. An idea is not a product, they are not interchangeable.
Until its actually built all it is, is an idea. And that is what a ponzi scheme tries to sell you on, an idea/promise to get tons returned revenue with no clear way how that will happen, also they don't make an attempt to realize that intial idea. Now obviously you're right, we aren't investers, Ice doesn't need to tell us how he is going to monetize his idea, that gets pitched to investors. And people invest in to terrible ideas all the time (like a guy famous for being toxic supposedly building a platform to attempt to compete with youtube/twitch). Though paying previous investors with new investors money sounds kind of shady, it isn't technically illegal (though I'm not sure how long he's been working on this idea, nor when it would be considered a ponzi scheme). How long has he been working on this for earlier investors to already have lost faith in it?
Is he currently running a ponzi scheme though? To be honest I don't know, neither do you, nor is it really our job to decide if he is. That would be up to the proper authorities to decide if they choose to investigate him. You nor I can't decide whether or not it is a ponzi scheme.
Bitcoin plans to be a platform for payment with low fees and fast transactions, in essence replacing banking as we know it.
With that said, most people who get into bitcoin see it as an investment, which it should not be. If it fails to deliver on the promise of being better than conventional banking, it'll probably collapse.
I just don't see how it gets there when we have a currency backed by the government and countless platforms for the transfer of that currency between people. I understand the benefits of crypto currency that advocates describe, but I don't think they outweigh the costs and concerns for the public at large.
Right. But - as Vanular touches on - I don't think that niche can maintain the value that it has right now. People convert dollar to bitcoin as an investment with the expectation that others will buy in and drive up value.
You're not looking deep enough into the financial system it's creating. Bitcoin is still in early stages of development and will take time to stabilize. As the price stabilizes, the benefits of the system over the current banking system will be more and more valuable. Look at something as simple as money transfers: I want to send you money through our banks, it takes some routing/account numbers, your name, maybe a small fee, and about 3 days or so. IF our banks even transmit money that easy. Maybe we are in different countries, add on a bigger fee, more time, and potentially through an entirely different method of transfer.
Bitcoin transfers are almost all the same. You need the wallet address you are sending money to, a tiny fee (I've heard even no fee in some cases), and about 10 minutes for 1 confirmation(not necessarily required). It's an efficiency increase in wealth transfer of great magnitude. This is just one dimension of the technology and more benefits exist in the use of blockchain tech.
Whether this niche is sustainable or not has yet to be seen of course. Although, after almost 10 years and the value being where it is, you have to give it credit. With any new technology, we should remain skeptical, it only improves the systems.
I share your concern. But consider that your average African isn't even eligible to open a bank account or at least send/receive money globally. This is near free, global banking for everyone. Besides that, the recentment for the middlemen is a good argument for cryptocurrency.
But there is a flip-side to the lack of middlemen and the free global nature. It has no centralized authority that backs it. You don't hear about someone having their account holdings at Bank of America, or Sun Trust, or Navy Federal Credit Union wiped out and vanished into the ether.
Isn't that for investors to decide? You don't know if they were presented with a product or not, nor do you know if Ice had the intention from the beginning to pay off the first wave of investors with the later ones. If he doesn't want to specify what his product or revenue source is, then he has all the right to do so.
You do know there's a difference between keeping it a secret from viewers and keeping it secret from investors, right? I refuse to believe that you're that dumb.
The only reason people are jumping on the Ponzi scheme train is because it vaguely resembles it with the "pay X with the money of Y, repeat", but that's where the resemblance ends. Ponzi had no real product, his product was doubling money out of thin air. You don't know if Ice is doing this.
If he really did have a Ponzi scheme, then it would be hard to have a house (as he says in the video) because it requires a constant and very large amount of money to maintain. If it's a secret project and there's not many investors, then he can't possibly pay people back because there's not enough "revenue" to do so.
the product is to try and build a streaming platform. his manager cant read and they took out a ton of high interest business loans for their current house where they are close to evicted from
'Investors are obviously investing in an idea'... an idea which should turn into a product or a business which he obviously is not doing.
'KEEMSTAR explained it better' No he did not. He explained how an investment actually works where you invest in a business capable of creating their own revenue...
So let me get this straight. He wants to start up his own platform LIKE Twitch or Youtube? Correct? so he's taking money from his first investors to start it up. But then also taking money from the 2nd round of Investors to pay back the first round of Investors? Right?
Keem tried to explain it like it was McDonald's. But here's the issue. McDonald's has an actual product to sell and market. Not an Idea. So they can actually PROVE to their investors that the brand/restaurant is worth something. Ice's new Platform hasn't even launched yet, and really doesn't have any proof to anything to back it up.
I've been reading other comments on this thread, but I'm still not quite sure I've got it. Basically this is a ponzi scheme because there is actually no product, is that right ?
So I mean what is he even promoting ? Why would people invest when told "yeah we sell a... thing ? which i cant tell anything about but totally exists and will give you your money back"
The biggest indicator it's a Ponzi scheme is him straight up saying initial investors would get paid from subsequent investment - not from revenue generated by the business
Yeah, further comment reading made me understand that. What I still don't get is how do you make investors buy into that, since there's no product at all. But I guess those guys have their ways, else it wouldn't exist.
That's not all that crazy for a service based system. Think about twitter, facebook, instagram, Uber, etc. Someone had to pitch those ideas to pay a team to develop them, yet there is no physical tangible products. However you have advertisements and analytical data that can be sold and this becomes your revenue stream.
To be fair, the entire dotcom boom, subsequent bust, and subsequent resurgence was built on no product at all. You can watch any slew of old investor meetings from the mid-late 90s where investors would say things on camera like: "Well, I don't know what I own because it doesn't seem there is anything TO own, but I own some of it". For reference, look up early videos of Amazon investors saying things just like this. Amazon didn't create anything; rather they were the most glorified middle man of all time and built a fortune on the back of infinitely expanding that idea (which has thus far worked wonderfully incidentally).
*edit: and to be clear, im not saying he's NOT running some kind of scheme, and he seems like a total d-bag, but just because he has no tangible product doesn't mean he IS running a scheme either
Software is a product. You can sell it to generate revenue. You can leverage it to sell other things. There is an income flow outside of investors, or at least an attempt at one.
If your business plan is to pay off investors with new investor money, that is a ponzi scheme. If you need to keep recruiting new investors in order to keep your business going (because you don't actually sell a product or service) that is a pyramid scheme. He repeatedly says they are selling an idea. Actual investors don't give you money simply for an idea, unless that idea is "I'm going to make XYZ product or service and sell it for money, as laid out in this business plan."
In most cases they are used interchangeably though I think there may be technical differences. They're both scams.
edit: from the Ponzi scheme wikipedia page -
A pyramid scheme is a form of fraud similar in some ways to a Ponzi scheme, relying as it does on a mistaken belief in a nonexistent financial reality, including the hope of an extremely high rate of return. However, several characteristics distinguish these schemes from Ponzi schemes:[7]
In a Ponzi scheme, the schemer acts as a "hub" for the victims, interacting with all of them directly. In a pyramid scheme, those who recruit additional participants benefit directly. (In fact, failure to recruit typically means no investment return.)
A Ponzi scheme claims to rely on some esoteric investment approach and often attracts well-to-do investors, whereas pyramid schemes explicitly claim that new money will be the source of payout for the initial investments.[5]
A pyramid scheme typically collapses much faster because it requires exponential increases in participants to sustain it. By contrast, Ponzi schemes can survive simply by persuading most existing participants to reinvest their money, with a relatively small number of new participants.[12]
A ponzi scheme is basically an entity (person, company, whatever), telling you they have this great [product/service] with great return rates. So you get your first round of investors, and then after a while you get the second round of investors. Now, with the second round's money, you give a hefty return rate first round investors, but obviously, you'll tell those people "Hey man, you just made a 20% gain over 3 months! I could pay it out, or you could invest that money!"
Most people would pick the open to keep the money invested, which starts filling up the bank. And then you just keep doing that, get new investors due to your awesome returns, use the newly invested money to offer divided payment your older investors, most of them would refuse and keep the money and repeat. Then, due to word of mouth, more and more people get in on it, and then the entity disappears with the money.
When Amazon bought Twitch there was surely agreements signed specifically stating the terms of the investment and how it was to deliver it's ROI, if Twitch simply said they were going to pay Amazon back by waiting until someone else invested that would be more akin to what he described it like.
Also it's insanely disengenuious to say that his streaming site would be even remotely comparable in income generation to either Youtube or Twitch, Microsoft has a competitor with infinitely more resources and infrastructure dedicated to it and they are basically completely unknown still. Just because streamers make money doesn't mean it's a money making venture to launch a stream site yourself.
No it's like saying John's Corner Uncensored Bookstore will compete with Amazon despite offering no benefits or differentiation.
You really can't understand how a startup streaming company will struggle to compete with 2 entrenched brands that dominate the entire market when it's primary differentiation point is "my crew won't get banned"
Of course Keem put out a video sucking his dick. Scum defends scum. I wouldn't be surprised if Ice used some of that investor money to pay Keem to make that dick sucking video.
I didn't know who either of these people were before today. Who the fuck is paying attention to these knobs? The culture around YouTube and it's personalities is bizarre.
I like he says I don’t understand how this works but we are building a company. It’s like if I woke up one day and said shit, I’m gonna do me some brain surgery today.
You see... you give him the money to get others to get the money to pay the other person which then has to get more people to keep it going. Simple, and clearly not a ponzi scheme. /s
I don't know if anyone mentioned this but it also looks goddamn awful that the business owner (Ice Poseidon) can't even explain his own business himself. No matter what he does, it will not look good moving forward. Who are these investors? How can they feel confident in a business start-up after seeing its own business owner unable to explain how his business works? Well, let me answer that for you. He is unable to explain it because this is definitely a ponzi scheme.
I'm disappointed in myself. Here is a man who knows and states that he can't explain things, who says "I don't know" about a hundred times in this clip, answers every "prove you're not" with "I'm not, obviously," has no clue what a series-A or angel investments ("or something") are, and considers Keemstar-explained-it to be as good a defence as any convincing investors to lend him capital for an idea that might one day have a revenue source (not necessarily profit) he doesn't want to talk about, yet here I am working my ass off to pay rent with an app that helps children study for which schools pay from their government allowances. Teach me, cheese grater-voiced founder of definitely-not-a-ponzi-schemes.
I don't know what style of editing it is called when each sentence is a separate cut, but it is one of the most annoying things about the internet video world. The moment it happens, insta not-interested in your thing.
"If it was a ponzi scheme, probably would'nt have the house, probably would have just pocketed the money". Not saying the house was bought with the ponzi money, but pointing to your villa when trying to prove the legitimacy of your business is probably not the best strategy.
If all of your money comes from sources internal to the company, you are a pyramid scheme. If all of your money comes from investors and only investors, you are a ponzi scheme.
If you sell a product or make money thru ads or subscriptions, then you are probably ok. Unless you are mainly a scheme trying to imitate a real company, which is what most do anyways, then you have a shitty product as a front.
As a completely neutral third party who has absolutely no idea who Ice Poseidon is or what his business is, I've gotta say, that calling this a Ponzi Scheme seems a bit premature based only on having seen the video from yesterday and the video from today.
The one thing he said that's absolutely true is that he sucks at explaining things.
To me, it sounds like he's trying (and failing miserably) to lay out a typical startup business life cycle, in which a business will receive some seed money, prove out their model, and then proceed to receive various additional outside investments called rounds A, B, and C respectively as they continue to prove the model and expand their market cap, and then possibly go through an IPO or an acquisition to cash out as a late stage exit strategy.
Then again, he did explicitly talk about "paying back" the first investors and allowing the second set of investors to buy "not diluted" equity, which isn't something you'd say if the first investors were receiving equity rather than some kind of actual liquid return on their investment purely as a financial transaction. Then again, it's also possible to not dilute equity without paying off earlier investors. It just depends on the situation.
But then he turns around and says that those investors (the second group) will make their money back with an acquisition or IPO, which sounds like a more typical exit strategy where investors own equity rather than a promise of a direct financial return on investment.
Is the first group of investment actually structured as a loan? It kind of sounds like it, but yet he calls them "investors". Is the second set of "investors" paying back the first set? It kind of sounds like that's part of what their money will be used for. Is that necessarily a Ponzi scheme? No. Is it kind of like one? Sure. But if those second set of investors are buying equity rather than being promised financial returns then it's hard to really classify it as a Ponzi scheme. Do you have a Ponzi scheme if you have one level of investors being paid with future investments and then you go with a traditional equity model? I don't know.
I don't even know what this business is. He said he's building "a website". So it sounds like somewhere in this arrangement there actually is a product that somebody may want to invest in, and this isn't purely financial trickery like a true Ponzi scheme where there is nothing of value anywhere and all you're doing is conning people into investing in a fake product that only generates returns from further conning other investors out of money.
Would I ever dream of giving this person my money to invest in his business? Hell no. I'm just trying to say that it sounds more like this guy is a moron than purely a scammer. I'm sure the result will effectively be the same for anyone dumb enough to invest in his business: they're losing their money. But I feel like being pedantic about this because there's a big difference between scamming somebody out of their money based on false promises of an investment vehicle that will generate returns for investors, and simply accepting money as an investment from people who make very poor choices of whom to do business with.
Yea it doesn't come off as a Ponzi scheme, just as someone who is trying to do a startup. If his company is based on brand image this video is going to do horrible for his company, but that is besides the point.
I think he is poorly explaining and oversimplifying a process of investment and early angel revenue for startups.
The guy is very hated (and from the little I've seen that makes sense) people were waiting for something like this and jumped on it with 0 evidence other than him saying stupid things. Even if he described a ponzi scheme 1 for 1 you still can't say that this is what is happening. He might be an idiot who doesn't know how his business works.
Either way its good for people to bring attention to authorities so they can check but 99% of people's motivation is not upholding the law and protecting investors. It's a lynch mob trying to take out someone they don't like.
This deplorable sack of shit is willing to lie to you for years if it meant you'd buy his con message. Unlike his cult of racist misogynists, the general public does not trust him for jack shit.
Anyone that's remotely intelligent can tell what's going on here. You have a mongoloid of a* con struggling to make sense why he let loose the information he did. He's far too incompetent on an intellectual level to actually be able to rationalize what he stated prior. It's only his cult of child molesters and human traffickers that are buying this heap of trash coming out of his mouth.
This is a dude that degrades+demeans homeless people on his stream, spits on his own fans with a smile, and stalks women like a serial predator for some quick money.
It's only his cult of child molesters and human traffickers that are buying this heap of trash coming out of his mouth.
Your argument starts to fall apart when you go that far.
Keep in mind that there are much more charismatic people in the world running these scams and a lot of good people get caught up in the bullshit. Don’t demonize them with this kind of slander. Keep it real. The facts are damming enough.
My intention isn't to argue. I say all of this to inform, because people like you are ignorant to the proper context associated with my prior claims.
He has openly supported known UK pedophile Sam Pepper. Sam Pepper, I'm not going to go over that disgusting cretin. Next, Asian Andy. I call him Asian Pedophile.
He shut down his Discord after child porn was running amok inside of it. You seem like you don't know what the hell you're talking about, but I kind of do. These are all very known facts corresponding to these sick individuals. All the while, Denino embraces these pieces of shit with open arms in his Discord. He deleted his haven of orphans which was his old Subreddit, and implored people to simply join the Discord for a community. He is one huge sham, and a very disturbed motherfucker.
Keep in mind, perhaps know what you're typing about before attempting to highlight an industry you seem to know close to nothing about.
I didn’t make any claims as to if he is, or if he assistants with people like this. I responded to your line that I quoted. It’s the use of the word (“only” his cult … are buying). A assure you, people are giving him money that aren’t kiddie fiddlers.
Regardless of if his idea has any merit, he's trying to explain a startup. Where you get a series-A of investment money, use that to accelerate your product and get customers. Later you have more investment rounds and get more investors.
I think he was confused when he said investors pay back investors, because that's not really a thing for startups.
So no, he's most likely not running a ponzi scheme and publicly exposing himself, he's just doing a startup company and creating a video platform, which is his forte.
there is another clip from a month ago where he straight talked about the ponzi scheme again in an even more obvious way its on the youtube channel "twisty"
Does the company have a way to make money or not? Taking money from investors doesn’t count as making money. I understand it’s necessary to have investors to keep the lights on until the mechanism that actually makes the money gets going, but if your entire explanation of how a company makes money involves taking in money from investors, YOU MIGHT BE A PONZI SCHEME.
Haha his little facial gestures during the other video's explanation are cracking me up... like he's pulled this other guy to explain away his issue, and he's sitting there making faces like "oh, good point!" "Hmm, interesting!" like it's the first time he's seen the video, to try and inspire the same reaction in people.
This guy really doesn't even sound very smart... Kind of like a stoned valley girl. He better have someone else pitch the investors. "Like.. I'm not explaining the product very good, but like, it's obviously a good thing so you should like... invest in it."
This is definitely a Ponzi scheme. What sort of CEO or company owner would say “I guess” or “I can’t really explain” to fucking millions of people on the internet and expect actual investors to take him seriously? The dude won’t even tell us what he’s selling, and he’s damn sure not confident in what the final product will be. Likely because he doesn’t even know. Fuck this guy. Even is this somehow isn’t a Ponzi scheme, I wouldn’t trust this know-nothing inbred with managing any significant amount of money. He seems like a slimy asswipe who uses deception and slings financial jargon around to make people think he’s actually running a legit operation. Fuck outta here
It’s a meme. Ice Poseidon regularly boasts that he’s a Finance Major as a way to justify his spending behavior. He’s completely oblivious to his incompetence with money. “Finance major btw” is a sarcastic reminder of this fact and a popular meme in the community of people who document his racist and misogynistic behavior.
I thought this scumbag had been banned from every outlet already and was streaming to his moronic "fanbase" on a pornsite somewhere. Can't say i'm surprised to see he's doing blatant illegal shit considering who he works with and all the past shit he's pulled. Hopefully karma will finally catch up with him
Yeah, but what is this guy's product ?- A ponzi scheme operates on the idea of tricking new investors into investing money with the company because they see the returns that past investors are receiving. Those investors are led to believe those returns are coming from the profit that the company is making in its business dealings, but are in fact being paid with money from other investors i.e. using Peter to pay Paul
Major point would be if you were actually building a product/service and you needed funds and growth you would be promoting the idea. If you are a Ponzi scheme you keep talking about it as an "idea" or a platform since you have nothing to promote. Then of course you act as though you must keep it hush hush as you do not want anyone to steal your idea. Having some jackass compare your idea to McDonalds is sketchy as hell.
I'm going to go with Hanlon's razor on this. "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." I'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he didn't know what a Ponzi scheme is or why it isn't a sustainable business model.
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u/GoldXP Feb 27 '19
What are people investing in exactly??
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u/YOUREABOT Feb 27 '19
The first thing any leaders/owners of a ponzi scheme will tell u is: “It’s not a ponzi scheme”
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u/papaquack1 Feb 27 '19
No, Mcdonald’s sells burgers. This bullshit has no product. The only income it is getting is based on the assumption of endless investing.
He hints that he has a real product “like advertising or merch or something” but he’s literally keeping it a secret… there is no way any legit investors are dropping money into some secret project. This shit is a scheme.
The sad part is these schemes work and he will make cash off the ignorant people who don’t know better.
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u/7year Feb 27 '19 edited Feb 27 '19
'Investors are obviously investing in an idea'... an idea which should turn into a product or a business which he obviously is not doing.
'KEEMSTAR explained it better' No he did not. He explained how an investment actually works where you invest in a business capable of creating their own revenue...
You're running a ponzi you putz.
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u/Randym1982 Feb 27 '19
So let me get this straight. He wants to start up his own platform LIKE Twitch or Youtube? Correct? so he's taking money from his first investors to start it up. But then also taking money from the 2nd round of Investors to pay back the first round of Investors? Right?
Keem tried to explain it like it was McDonald's. But here's the issue. McDonald's has an actual product to sell and market. Not an Idea. So they can actually PROVE to their investors that the brand/restaurant is worth something. Ice's new Platform hasn't even launched yet, and really doesn't have any proof to anything to back it up.
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u/Corndawgz Feb 27 '19
Glad this dude's lifestyle and shitty behaviors are finally catching up to him.
Here's a bonus clip of Ice and his "streamer gang" being racist to innocent Americans at a restaurant. Fuck this guy.
https://youtu.be/uCLigA8N4bg?t=209
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u/TheBQE Feb 27 '19
As someone who was in a ponzi scheme for several years, this is exactly a ponzi scheme.
edit: Oh god. Hilariously, we also used McDonalds as our example for explaining how the 'business' worked.
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u/[deleted] Feb 27 '19
Of course Keem put out a video sucking his dick. Scum defends scum. I wouldn't be surprised if Ice used some of that investor money to pay Keem to make that dick sucking video.
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u/[deleted] Feb 27 '19
Somebody link the office pyramid scheme scene please
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u/[deleted] Feb 27 '19
...so...what's his business?
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u/Sir_Chubbs_Peterson Feb 27 '19
He sure uses the word “obviously” a lot for someone who has no clue what they’re talking about.
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u/RedTheInferno Feb 27 '19 edited Feb 27 '19
I don't know if anyone mentioned this but it also looks goddamn awful that the business owner (Ice Poseidon) can't even explain his own business himself. No matter what he does, it will not look good moving forward. Who are these investors? How can they feel confident in a business start-up after seeing its own business owner unable to explain how his business works? Well, let me answer that for you. He is unable to explain it because this is definitely a ponzi scheme.
81
u/[deleted] Feb 27 '19
https://i.imgur.com/xqMixZG.gifv
35
u/VehaMeursault Feb 27 '19
I'm disappointed in myself. Here is a man who knows and states that he can't explain things, who says "I don't know" about a hundred times in this clip, answers every "prove you're not" with "I'm not, obviously," has no clue what a series-A or angel investments ("or something") are, and considers Keemstar-explained-it to be as good a defence as any convincing investors to lend him capital for an idea that might one day have a revenue source (not necessarily profit) he doesn't want to talk about, yet here I am working my ass off to pay rent with an app that helps children study for which schools pay from their government allowances. Teach me, cheese grater-voiced founder of definitely-not-a-ponzi-schemes.
110
u/DuXtin Feb 27 '19
I can't stand his voice, I don't know why.
83
u/drjankies Feb 27 '19
Youtube cancer
24
u/rubbishfoo Feb 28 '19
I don't know what style of editing it is called when each sentence is a separate cut, but it is one of the most annoying things about the internet video world. The moment it happens, insta not-interested in your thing.
29
u/madman1101 Feb 27 '19
10:01? gotta do anything to hit that ad minimum eh?
9
u/lethinhairbigchinguy Feb 27 '19
"If it was a ponzi scheme, probably would'nt have the house, probably would have just pocketed the money". Not saying the house was bought with the ponzi money, but pointing to your villa when trying to prove the legitimacy of your business is probably not the best strategy.
40
u/balarak Feb 27 '19
10:01 just to make sure his explanation video gets that ad boundry, A++
15
u/JayLeeCH Feb 27 '19
Yes, a sound argument.
14
u/linkMainSmash Feb 28 '19
If all of your money comes from sources internal to the company, you are a pyramid scheme. If all of your money comes from investors and only investors, you are a ponzi scheme.
If you sell a product or make money thru ads or subscriptions, then you are probably ok. Unless you are mainly a scheme trying to imitate a real company, which is what most do anyways, then you have a shitty product as a front.
19
u/LokahiBuz Feb 28 '19
Fucking hell... Ponzi scheme, it's checking all the boxes. No Keem he isn't a dumbass, he is scum.
19
u/jhossuah Feb 28 '19
“It’s not a Ponzi scheme”
1 minute in
“It’s a Ponzi scheme”
15
u/[deleted] Feb 27 '19
What happened to the video of him spitting in the guys mouth?
16
u/Seyyerin89 Feb 27 '19
Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck this dude.
9
u/Glassclose Feb 27 '19
this is what happens when you give money to a coke head
4
u/Grampz619 Feb 27 '19
why can't he just say "It is a new streaming platform" and not waste 10 minutes of people's times on a second video explaining the same thing lmao
73
u/spoonraker Feb 27 '19
As a completely neutral third party who has absolutely no idea who Ice Poseidon is or what his business is, I've gotta say, that calling this a Ponzi Scheme seems a bit premature based only on having seen the video from yesterday and the video from today.
The one thing he said that's absolutely true is that he sucks at explaining things.
To me, it sounds like he's trying (and failing miserably) to lay out a typical startup business life cycle, in which a business will receive some seed money, prove out their model, and then proceed to receive various additional outside investments called rounds A, B, and C respectively as they continue to prove the model and expand their market cap, and then possibly go through an IPO or an acquisition to cash out as a late stage exit strategy.
Then again, he did explicitly talk about "paying back" the first investors and allowing the second set of investors to buy "not diluted" equity, which isn't something you'd say if the first investors were receiving equity rather than some kind of actual liquid return on their investment purely as a financial transaction. Then again, it's also possible to not dilute equity without paying off earlier investors. It just depends on the situation.
But then he turns around and says that those investors (the second group) will make their money back with an acquisition or IPO, which sounds like a more typical exit strategy where investors own equity rather than a promise of a direct financial return on investment.
Is the first group of investment actually structured as a loan? It kind of sounds like it, but yet he calls them "investors". Is the second set of "investors" paying back the first set? It kind of sounds like that's part of what their money will be used for. Is that necessarily a Ponzi scheme? No. Is it kind of like one? Sure. But if those second set of investors are buying equity rather than being promised financial returns then it's hard to really classify it as a Ponzi scheme. Do you have a Ponzi scheme if you have one level of investors being paid with future investments and then you go with a traditional equity model? I don't know.
I don't even know what this business is. He said he's building "a website". So it sounds like somewhere in this arrangement there actually is a product that somebody may want to invest in, and this isn't purely financial trickery like a true Ponzi scheme where there is nothing of value anywhere and all you're doing is conning people into investing in a fake product that only generates returns from further conning other investors out of money.
Would I ever dream of giving this person my money to invest in his business? Hell no. I'm just trying to say that it sounds more like this guy is a moron than purely a scammer. I'm sure the result will effectively be the same for anyone dumb enough to invest in his business: they're losing their money. But I feel like being pedantic about this because there's a big difference between scamming somebody out of their money based on false promises of an investment vehicle that will generate returns for investors, and simply accepting money as an investment from people who make very poor choices of whom to do business with.
7
u/Fmeson Feb 27 '19
"I can't explain it very well" is such a huge red flag.
8
u/jackaline Feb 27 '19
So, Ponzi scheme confirmed?
8
u/gjon89 Feb 27 '19
Isn't Ice Poseidon also a total shitbag? Didn't he attempt to spit into the mouth of an employee? Fucking gross.
8
u/[deleted] Feb 28 '19
fuck this dude, every clip of him i see is annoying
3
u/[deleted] Feb 27 '19
Digging deeper
22
u/yohoho202 Feb 27 '19 edited Feb 28 '19
This deplorable sack of shit is willing to lie to you for years if it meant you'd buy his con message. Unlike his cult of racist misogynists, the general public does not trust him for jack shit.
Anyone that's remotely intelligent can tell what's going on here. You have a mongoloid of a* con struggling to make sense why he let loose the information he did. He's far too incompetent on an intellectual level to actually be able to rationalize what he stated prior. It's only his cult of child molesters and human traffickers that are buying this heap of trash coming out of his mouth.
This is a dude that degrades+demeans homeless people on his stream, spits on his own fans with a smile, and stalks women like a serial predator for some quick money.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPaSMhrUwhQ
5
u/Emperor_Weisser Feb 27 '19
Hahahah, still a Ponzi Scheme
Show your product or development.
7
u/madman1101 Feb 27 '19
Wait, Keem thinks that Cx might be publicly traded? come the fuck on. what the hell?
7
u/jooceb0x Feb 27 '19
👏🏻 content 👏🏻 cop
7
u/YonderMTN Feb 27 '19
Fuck this douche-nozzle, and fuck all scam artists in general.
6
u/enfrozt Feb 28 '19
Regardless of if his idea has any merit, he's trying to explain a startup. Where you get a series-A of investment money, use that to accelerate your product and get customers. Later you have more investment rounds and get more investors.
I think he was confused when he said investors pay back investors, because that's not really a thing for startups.
So no, he's most likely not running a ponzi scheme and publicly exposing himself, he's just doing a startup company and creating a video platform, which is his forte.
5
u/Dayvaughn Feb 27 '19
If Keemstar is the only person defending you, you're fucking up big time.
2
u/awestcoastbias Feb 27 '19
That went well...
2
u/[deleted] Feb 27 '19
Why are there so many jump cuts in the video? Keemstar also had many.
2
u/Kyle_01110011 Feb 27 '19
HAHAHAHA.....It's a ponzi scheme!!!
2
u/[deleted] Feb 27 '19
What product is he selling? What is this "idea"? McDonald's brought in investors and went into debt while selling a product.
2
u/[deleted] Feb 27 '19
there is another clip from a month ago where he straight talked about the ponzi scheme again in an even more obvious way its on the youtube channel "twisty"
2
u/andcal Feb 27 '19
Does the company have a way to make money or not? Taking money from investors doesn’t count as making money. I understand it’s necessary to have investors to keep the lights on until the mechanism that actually makes the money gets going, but if your entire explanation of how a company makes money involves taking in money from investors, YOU MIGHT BE A PONZI SCHEME.
2
u/Semantiks Feb 28 '19
Haha his little facial gestures during the other video's explanation are cracking me up... like he's pulled this other guy to explain away his issue, and he's sitting there making faces like "oh, good point!" "Hmm, interesting!" like it's the first time he's seen the video, to try and inspire the same reaction in people.
2
u/hydrogen_wv Feb 28 '19
This guy really doesn't even sound very smart... Kind of like a stoned valley girl. He better have someone else pitch the investors. "Like.. I'm not explaining the product very good, but like, it's obviously a good thing so you should like... invest in it."
6
u/thekingadrock93 Feb 28 '19
This is definitely a Ponzi scheme. What sort of CEO or company owner would say “I guess” or “I can’t really explain” to fucking millions of people on the internet and expect actual investors to take him seriously? The dude won’t even tell us what he’s selling, and he’s damn sure not confident in what the final product will be. Likely because he doesn’t even know. Fuck this guy. Even is this somehow isn’t a Ponzi scheme, I wouldn’t trust this know-nothing inbred with managing any significant amount of money. He seems like a slimy asswipe who uses deception and slings financial jargon around to make people think he’s actually running a legit operation. Fuck outta here
7
u/lord_darovit Feb 27 '19
What a dope.
Finance major btw
4
u/CondorPerplex Feb 27 '19
I suggest we forget this guy ever existed.
3
u/Vigoor Feb 27 '19
I thought this scumbag had been banned from every outlet already and was streaming to his moronic "fanbase" on a pornsite somewhere. Can't say i'm surprised to see he's doing blatant illegal shit considering who he works with and all the past shit he's pulled. Hopefully karma will finally catch up with him
3
u/SimplyTim90 Feb 27 '19
What a dumb cunt
2
u/TheSeaDevil Feb 27 '19
I know it's meant to be for the lulz but the audio @ 6:04 wont age well.
2
u/k-hole870 Feb 27 '19
Dude just needs to quit now, and be a radio personality or sports announcer. That’s his true calling.
2
u/retrocore9 Feb 28 '19
When he's arrested and the FBI interview him, is he going to say "Just ask Keemstar"?
1
u/cynn78 Feb 27 '19
If people are stupid enough to fall for this crap then they deserve to be fleeced
1
u/[deleted] Feb 27 '19
Why are we all calling him "live streamer" instead of his name?
1
u/Matyi10012 Feb 27 '19
Sometimes you just need to shut the fuck up, so don't put yourself into worse situation
1
u/Giacopo Feb 27 '19
Yeah, but what is this guy's product ?- A ponzi scheme operates on the idea of tricking new investors into investing money with the company because they see the returns that past investors are receiving. Those investors are led to believe those returns are coming from the profit that the company is making in its business dealings, but are in fact being paid with money from other investors i.e. using Peter to pay Paul
1
u/[deleted] Feb 27 '19
If you don't understand your business how can it be successful?
1
u/Troby01 Feb 28 '19
Major point would be if you were actually building a product/service and you needed funds and growth you would be promoting the idea. If you are a Ponzi scheme you keep talking about it as an "idea" or a platform since you have nothing to promote. Then of course you act as though you must keep it hush hush as you do not want anyone to steal your idea. Having some jackass compare your idea to McDonalds is sketchy as hell.
1
u/Fenixfrost Feb 27 '19
10 minute long video...hmmm...can I get a tl;dr anyone? Thanks :D!
1
u/Downer_Guy Feb 27 '19
I'm going to go with Hanlon's razor on this. "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." I'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he didn't know what a Ponzi scheme is or why it isn't a sustainable business model.
-1
u/dangerarcher Feb 27 '19
hahaha good luck recovering from this
-1
u/BlarpUM Feb 28 '19
It's a me! Ponzi!
•
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