yes
the crypto industry is one big scam industry
Is Bitcoin a Scam?
41–50 of 106 posts
Re: Is Bitcoin a Scam?
#42When scam becomes self sustaining (even in the face of repeated evidence it’s a scam), is it still a scam? It seems like this is built into the value of Bitcoin at this point. Someone could stand up and say “behold, I am manipulating the price of Bitcoin for my own gain, through nefarious means” and people would just think “well, after the price collapses because of this, someone else is bound to manipulate the price, so it’ll go back up!”
Re: Is Bitcoin a Scam?
#43Yes, Bitcoin is a ponzi (investment fraud). I collect the Best of Bitcoin is a ponzi articles @ https://openblockchains.github.io/bitcoin-ponzi Learn how the investment fraud works.
Isn't literally all of capitalism an enormous ponzi scheme? The older your money (i.e. the earlier you've held it and kept it) the richer you are. Younger people who have grown up after you now face a uphill battle because you the older person have capital you've accumulated earlier.
I'd love to be corrected on this but as it is every value system humans participate in appear to be very pyramidal.
Re: Is Bitcoin a Scam?
#44>Is x a scam because I don't understand it/I'm priced out? Uh, no. Though fiat currency is definitely a scam.
I worked with some guys and I could never work out why they were doing things the way they were. I didn't really interact with what they were doing that much so I just assumed they were experts in the area and I just didn't understand. Overtime I ended up working with them more and more and I started looking at what problems they were solving and how they were approaching it. The more I looked the more I didn't under…
I think the reason why you're getting so many different answers (ponzi, digital-gold, digital-cash, hyperinflation-hedge etc.) is because Bitcoin is not the same as any other money/currency/asset in existence, and people are trying to figure out what it really is and what its uses are.
Here's a fact though, Bitcoin is the hardest form of money ever created. With "hardest", I mean the most difficult to mint new quantities of it. That's why some people call it digital gold, because up until now, gold was the hardest form of money available.
I think it's actually the most difficult for people in rich western countries to see the value proposition of Bitcoin, since they're used to having strong, stable currencies and rule of law.
If you live in a country with 20% inflation and/or expropriation of assets, then Bitcoin is a way out.
Bitcoin does have a payment system, but IMO people who compare it to Visa or think that it should scale to handle everyday transactions are misguided. Eventually only very large and very valuable transactions will be made directly on the blockchain, and other transactions will be done on higher layers, like the lightning network.
Concerning Bitcoin being decentralized, it is, but I guess you dispute that due to a lot of hash power being in China. The Chinese miners are however individuals and not some uniform block who all think and act the same. Also, the mining pools are made up of individuals who can fairly easily switch to other pools at a moment's notice. Of all the cryptocurrencies, BTC appears to me to be the most decentralized.
Re: Is Bitcoin a Scam?
#45- Proof of work is inherently wasteful. - The ever expanding blockchain is wasteful (in storage, computation, network). - Having every transaction recorded forever is the opposite of anonymity ("pseudonymous" - come on!). - The energy usage is insane. - The throughput is way too slow. While there may be an anonymous digital currency that doesn't use a lot of energy, it probably has to be based on something other than…
Nano addresses these concerns, excluding privacy. The node's API is also straightforward. Nano was the first cryptocurrency I landed on when I wanted to pay players microtransactions in a browser based RPG. It works as described without undue hype. Solves the payment problem without promising to do everything under the sun.
Transactions are settled instantly and without fees. Rent seeking miners are taken out of the equation. Developers of services are incentivized to run nodes to have access to the network.
If cryptocurrency isn't intended to be used as a currency, only traded on to others or used in some perpetually forthcoming usecase - then concerns about it simply being a finance scheme may be on target.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nano_(cryptocurrency) https://docs.nano.org/whitepaper/english/
Re: Is Bitcoin a Scam?
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
betamax was better tech than vhs. it's adoption that counts.
Bitcoin has basically no adoption among people who use cryptocurrency for non-speculative purposes. Privacy-focused coins (Monero, etc) or coins with faster/better ledgers (Ethereum) are much more popular. There was a time when Bitcoin was a promising digital currency! I had some back then, around 2010. This is not that.
How much Ethereum is used for actual transactions? All things I hear from it are tech toys/demos and weird financial instruments/gambling...
Re: Is Bitcoin a Scam?
#47The amount of FUD in every Bitcoin-related thread on HN is mind boggling.
The network is decentralized, permissionless, pseudonymous and cheap. It is a stable protocol and layer 2 solutions are being built upon it to address the downsides blocking every day use.
He who controls the money, controls the world. The control is slipping and the roaches are starting to run around in panic.
Re: Is Bitcoin a Scam?
#48Yes, Bitcoin is a ponzi (investment fraud). I collect the Best of Bitcoin is a ponzi articles @ https://openblockchains.github.io/bitcoin-ponzi Learn how the investment fraud works.
Ponzi-scheme has very narrow definition. Bitcoin itself doesn't fall under it, though many such schemes have been run on it. It is more of mania or bubble. Not yet popped, but I still believe it is coming. Or maybe just slow deflation when investors have run out...
Re: Is Bitcoin a Scam?
#49It sounds like regulations are coming.
Bitcoin had better buy some nukes to protect itself. It’s about to get a big stick shoved down its throat.
Re: Is Bitcoin a Scam?
#50Titles in this format - Is some usually unremarkable X actually radical Y? - have conditioned me to instantly answer "No", sometimes audibly. I think it's the disingenuity masquerading as curiosity. You're not actually pondering that question, I should not expect an insightful dialectical exploration of the topic. You've made your mind up and you're exploiting my open mindedness to trojan your one-sided conclusion in…
From the Wikipedia article linked below, you’re better off assuming the answer is “yes”.
The real answer is that these titles are just click bait and don’t really provide evidence one way or another.
A 2016 study of a sample of academic journals that set out to test Betteridge's Law and Hinchliffe's Rule (see below) found that few titles were posed as questions and of those, few were yes/no questions and they were more often answered "yes" in the body of the article rather than "no".[13] A 2018 study of 2,585 articles in four academic journals in the field of ecology similarly found that very few titles were posed as questions at all, with 1.82 percent being wh-questions and 2.15 percent being yes/no questions.[14] Of the yes/no questions, 44 percent were answered "yes", 34 percent "maybe", and only 22 percent were answered "no".[14] In 2015, a study of 26,000 articles from 13 news sites on the World Wide Web, conducted by a data scientist and published on his blog, found that the majority (54 percent) were yes/no questions, which divided into 20 percent "yes" answers, 17 percent "no" answers and 16 percent whose answers he could not determine (all percentages rounded by Linander).[15]