In a crash, the holders of bitcoin will collectively have lost what they have paid the miners for their bitcoin. This sum may be not far from the sum originally invested with Madoff, after accounting for inflation. But bitcoin holders will have no one to pursue to recover this sum: it will simply have gone up in smoke, a social loss. The holders of bitcoin would then only wish it had been a Ponzi scheme.
WHY BITCOIN IS WORSE THAN A MADOFF-STYLE PONZI SCHEME
Professor, University of Oxford
Source: Financial Times