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Anyone have a resource on the technical aspect of this? Seems like these businesses create their own cryptocurrency? Or build it on top of Ether?

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You can easily do it in an hour or two by copying and pasting some code off the ethereum site.

They encourage it. I like to think of ethereum as a ponzi scheme which spawns ponzi schemes (some of which themselves are intending to be a new platform for generating currencies...)

https://www.ethereum.org/token

Not every questionable, bad or even fraudulent financial construct is a Ponzi scheme. Unless a coin has a clear promise of payout that the people organizing it would have to satisfy, it can't be a Ponzi scheme.

I suspect they're not using Ponzi scheme literally, more as a shorthand for the kind of scheme that promises plenty, but doesn't actually do anything.

See e.g: http://www.nytimes.com/1990/02/25/books/nothing-but-zzzz-bes...

Luckily we already have a word for that kind of scheme, "scam".

Wow, thanks for that link. That's actually very cool, and I can see why Ethereum is taking off.

The main method is to create a cryptocurrency using Ethereum's ERC20 standard. That way it can use the Ethereum blockchain and is compatible with a lot of wallets and applications.

You can get a code template from here:

https://github.com/ConsenSys/Tokens

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