timelets

Dr Ruja's genius was to recognise that established MLM [multi-level marketing] sellers with huge downlines were the perfect vehicle to market her fake coin - a plan the FBI says she privately referred to as "the bitch of Wall Street, meets MLM". This was the secret of OneCoin's success. It wasn't just a fake cryptocurrency, it was an old-fashioned pyramid scheme, with the fake coin as its "product". No wonder it spread like wildfire.

https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-50435014

It's a mechanism for exponential growth of the customer base combined with exponential profits per each customer. The product itself is designed so that somebody else will end up holding the bag when the scheme collapses.