Easy money? Examining the trustworthiness of HYIP

Deciding the right ways of investing money is complicated with the trade-offs of risks and returns. High Yield Investment Programs (HYIPs) have extremely high promised return rates, sometimes more than 100% daily, that can attract many investors. As a result, investing in most cryptocurrencies like bitcoins, HYIPs, and their websites is booming. Prior researchers have already classified HYIPs as scams. However, some websites still last for many years or constantly pay investors as promised. Therefore, we propose that trustworthiness of HYIP websites is questionable, with different affecting factors. Using a large secondary dataset, we empirically tested the relationships between response variables (trustworthiness) two groups of explanatory variables: stability, and media/platform factors. Overall, the effects of the media/platform group are much less than the stability group toward trustworthiness. This research provides theoretical and practical insights into the HYIP investment.