Is PucaTrade a pyramid scheme? Some (tl;dr) thoughts.

Inflation is the biggest flaw that Pucatrade has, and the main reason why I haven't started selling thousands of dollars worth of cards per month on this platform.

I think the main idea is fantastic. Dealing with points instead of an official currency is also a good idea (so both the company and users have less issues with governments).

But the money supply, the puca points supply, should be static. If you want pucapoints, you either buy them from another user or send cards to another user that has points. Like it works in the real world. If you want other people's money, you have give another thing in exchange, either another currency (in this case, a "real world" currency for pucapoints), or goods or services (cards).

Giving people points just for creating an account is bad. Others people pucapoints becomes less valuable after that. You are hurting your customers by making their savings in pucapoints less valuable, which also makes your costumers less willing to keep trading, as they trust less in your currency.

Giving people points if they buy something and don't receive it, while not removing them from the seller's account is also bad. You are creating points from nowhere, and therefore socializing losses between all customers.

Both those things are already bad in themselves, but could be irrelevant if it wasn't because they are easily exploitable. What happens if either bots of people from poorer countries start creating accounts like crazy? What happens if a group of friends sometimes claim not to have received items that they trade between themselves, getting points for free?

But that's not enough. Being able to buy points from the website is also bad. When someone is buying points from the stores, the money supply increases also, and therefore you are again punishing the rest of your customers (and also the buyer, who is paying a fixed amount for a currency that keeps dropping in value). Points should be obtained only between users.

Where does Pucatrade make the profit from then? From people paying to have extra features, like they already do. And if that's not enough, and customers are willing to pay more for their service, by either charging more to get those extra features and/or by charging a fee for selling cards.

Those Puca Points obtained from fees would then reenter the system in two different ways: either the owners just sell them, like any other user, or they use them to buy cards.

/r/PucaTrade Thread