Forex As a Pyramid Scheme

Many of us have been approached by a friend or family member in an attempt to sell you a ‘once in a lifetime opportunity’ to earn money by signing up for a program that teaches you how to multiply income, often praising methods used by greats such as Robert Kiyosaki and Sharon Lechter, the authors of Rich Dad, Poor Dad.

These schemes coerce you into a multi-level marketing scheme where rather than focusing on the reason you joined, in this case, trading forex. Most of your time is spent recruiting new members into the company because you are incentivized by earning affiliate commission under a pyramid structure. Rich Dad, Poor Dad never stated earning income through pyramid schemes but they don't tell you that.

When you become a target by a member of these schemes, you will be told you can change your life by earning tons of money that will enable you to quit your day job and travel the world — financial freedom. But if this was true, why would someone who is supposedly making tons of money try so hard to recruit you rather than focus on his money-making machine？

Let's take a look at how this system begins and ends.

Step 1: Win Victims Over

A recruiter sells an unsuspecting victim the dream of financial freedom and how they can make a ton of cash in the foreign exchange market. This isnt necessarily a lie because the forex market experiences significant volatility which skilled traders can profit from.

The recruiter tries so hard to convince people to join forex and some even guilt trip their friends and family members into joining the system.

When it becomes uncomfortable to recruit people in person, it is common for a recruiter to start posting ‘the dream life’ on their social media and encouraging their followers to join them in the journey to financial freedom.

Have it at the back of your mind that this recruiter was recruited by someone else.

Step 2: Purchase A Product

When joining a forex multi-level marketing company, you are made to purchase a product — training modules and videos, trading signals provided by more experienced traders and other related products. You‘re made to believe that the more products you purchase, the higher the likelihood of you becoming a successful trader. When you purchase a product, you're added to your recruiter’s downline meaning your recruiter gets a commission for bringing you into the system. Your recruiter also gets a commission when you recruit someone into your own downline. This is where a conflict of interest starts to surface…

Some forex MLM companies offer memberships where you are awarded a rank and offered the chance to grow your rank through recruiting people into your downline. The higher up the ranks you are, the more people you have under your downline and therefore the more you earn.

I describe this as a conflict of interest because you joined forex to trade and not to become a salesman.

Step 3: Lose At Forex

Many researches show that a very low percentage of forex traders are profitable with one stating that 80% of forex traders quit within the first two years. One thing I can assure you is that forex trading is difficult and from my experience in trading, you must be prepared to lose. I have lost money trading even after being profitable. Many traders win and then lose what they won in their next trades.

I don‘t mean to shit on anyone’s hustle or discourage anyone from trading forex but the difficulty in trading forex is often downplayed by forex trading companies and their recruiters. There are profitable traders who have made serious money from trading but they represent just about 5–10% of traders.

Step 4: Focus on Recruiting Rather Than Trading

After a streak of unsuccessful trades, a recruiter realizes that adding members into their downline has made them more money than trading. The conflict of interest I mentioned earlier starts to manifest further as they now focus on recruiting more people who will, in turn, recruit to their own downlines forming a pyramid structure like in the image above in an attempt to move up the ranks and earn more.

Step 5: Spend More Money On Products

You will be encouraged by the forex MLM company to buy more products to better your trading skills or to gift to your downlines to support their hustle or to attract potential recruits. After growing your downlines you will have made some money to afford these new products and will begin giving it back to the company. The companies will also host conferences where people at the higher echelon of the pyramid will become spokespersons encouraging and advising you not to give up on the dream. They appear as the dream you want to achieve and you continue to pay for conferences and seminars to gain more knowledge and grow your network within the space.

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