You overlooked an interesting detail in the chat you copy/pasted (emphasis is from me)
[15/11/2014, 18:35:14] Mark Lyford: without us raising the money from private investors ( nothing to do with crypto traders etc) normal business people we have no business until we get the funding to pay the real profits we want, the profits we paid last week are just a small amount to what we want to be doing
That sounds very much like an admission that Banx was paying profits out of investor funds, which would make Banx a ponzi scheme.
Sounds to me that he means until they get enough runway to get more operations turning a profit to pay profits from. You can read into anything from snippets of conversation . During that time it could be some businesses had some profit, just not the kind of profits people were wanting.
Well, we could easily see what the truth is if Lyford would publish the accounting books.
he never will, they don't exist, the surest sign of fraud & embezzlement
It's not like if there were not many other elements that are consistent with my interpretation of this "snippet of conversation".
Banx was a ponzi,illegal by definition