The people on the bottom level of the pyramid, no matter how shallow or deep it goes will always lose their money. Its easy to see that the number in the bottom level of the pyramid always exceeds the total of all those in the levels above no matter how many levels there are. If each level must recruit 6 more below them, the ratio of losers to winners is close to 5 to 1 - ~84% of all investors will lose their money. The pyramid in reality would not be perfectly balanced and some members might be able to partially fill their number of recruits, but the same principles apply.