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Bitcoin is a Ponzi

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Re: Bitcoin is a Ponzi

#81

Post by pcstl »

shimonabi wrote: post #20

About two weeks ago a coworker came into my office and told me he bought a cheap motherboard so he could mine bitcoin with his graphics card. Is it theoretically still possible to make a profit with that kind of hardware nowadays? Please someone just tell me. I have no interest to do research into this. I just feel sadness for the crypto-bros.

You can still mine ETH on a (high-end) GPU and make a profit. BTC mining is way too advanced for that, it's done with mining-specific chips. Mining with a GPU gives you too little hash rate for it to be profitable.

Going a bit more in-depth: Mining is a competitive activity. Your chance of being the person to mine a block is proportional to the fraction of the hash rate of all miners you hold. Therefore, if everyone is using super advanced mining hardware and you go in with a GPU, you hold an insignificant fraction of the hash rate and have next to no chance of actually mining a block, while you still spend on power and hardware maintenance - which will probably make mining a net negative for you.

Nowadays BTC mining is advanced enough that the only way to make a profit is with big specially-designed rigs located in places with access to very cheap energy sources.

Re: Bitcoin is a Ponzi

#82

Post by wpietri »

arthurcolle wrote: post #50
Osmose wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it's not about cashing out then why is the primary hype mechanism talking about the dollar-equivalent value of anything crypto related? Why does it matter if an NFT was sold for $300k worth of ether?

Blame financial news media, things like Fortune magazine's list of new crypto billionaires. The author of this blog post's claim that 99.99% of people in crypto are only participating because of expectations of future profit is unsourced and a fiction that he has created based on preconceived notions. Don't participate if you don't want - I like participating in a system that isn't being tracked by agencies especiall…

I'd bet that cryptocurrencies are much more vigorously tracked than US dollars. The fraction of cryptocurrency transactions related to scams, fraud, money laundering, tax evasion, and other financial crime must be at least a couple orders of magnitude higher than that for real money.

Re: Bitcoin is a Ponzi

#84

Post by Swizec »

whimsicalism wrote: post #13
Swizec wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn’t forex kind of a joke to everyone? Hearing your friend got into Forex is about the same as when they get into Amway, Tupperware, DoTerra, or Herbalife …

Yes, this is true, but at the same time - there are major institutional players and market makers who do make money off of Forex.

Hey Tupperware makes hella money off Tupperware too! Reusing your customers as your sales force, marketing, and distribution channel is hugely profitable.

Re: Bitcoin is a Ponzi

#85

Post by willhinsa »

blackoil wrote: post #19

I was just now seeing the first video of https://a16z.com/crypto-startup-school/ . Whole video is about how blockchain is awesome because Computer, Internet and Mobile were awesome. Followed by some answers about how we don't know of any use case right now. Is there any non currency use case of blockchain?

Urbit for starters (which technically you could say isn't NOT about money, since entities are de facto tradeable. But the main purpose for identity being on the Blockchain is reliability and decentralization, with the inherent benefit of them being in effect utilitarian NFT's). I use it every day, and it's one of the technologies I'm most excited about seeing evolve in the future. I'm not trying to evangelize or proselytize Urbit--just being frank.

There's also interesting things going on in the NFT space towards MMORPGs based around an economy of in game items being themselves NFT's. It's not all stuff and nonsense and jpeg millionaires lol :)

Some of it is, surely, but as time goes on more and more technologies will use it to greater effect with more utility beyond merely, "prices go up".

Re: Bitcoin is a Ponzi

#88

Post by bb88 »

sailingparrot wrote: post #52
dhsysusbsjsi wrote: post #9

I think this is simplistic. It’s viewing Bitcoin through a lens of a traditional Ponzi scheme assuming people that trade their fiat currency for Bitcoin are investing, with a view to one day take profits back into dollars. What if people are seeing discussion of minting a trillion dollar coin, trillions in QE, 25% of all dollars created in the last 12 months…and concluding that fiat currency is in an endgame and they…

> What if people are seeing [...] What if my grandmother had wheels? More seriously, how many people do you know are seeing what you are talking about? Everyone I know that invested in crypto did so hoping to trade it back later on for more fiat than they paid. Sure, maybe it's a biased sample, but it's a sizeable sample and I do not know even a single person that traded their fiat for crypto definitly.

English tends to describe things as they are. To me the key principle is the constant use of the words "invest", "investing", or "investment" when it comes to crypto assets.

I don't invest in a credit card for spending. I use a credit card, though.

Re: Bitcoin is a Ponzi

#89

Post by qaq »

glenvdb wrote: post #51

A lot of the "Common Objections" relate to the REASONS people choose to own Bitcoin and how those cases make it a Ponzi. There are many different reasons to own Bitcoin, however the author seems to only view it through the lens of someone living in a wealthy and developed country with financial stability. The properties of it being difficult/impossible to confiscate and its privacy make it valuable in oppressive regi…

Generally people participating in a Ponzi scheme do not view it as such. The tactics deployed by truly oppressive regimes make anything easy to confiscate including bitcoin.

Re: Bitcoin is a Ponzi

#90

Post by Sargos »

echelon wrote: post #46
dhsysusbsjsi wrote: post #9

I think this is simplistic. It’s viewing Bitcoin through a lens of a traditional Ponzi scheme assuming people that trade their fiat currency for Bitcoin are investing, with a view to one day take profits back into dollars. What if people are seeing discussion of minting a trillion dollar coin, trillions in QE, 25% of all dollars created in the last 12 months…and concluding that fiat currency is in an endgame and they…

Quantum computing is going to bring this entire house down. Money without an army is just paper. Or, in this case, imaginary numbers. There will be no one to cry to when the machines start cracking all the hashes and wipe away the entire ecosystem. I'd wager the NSA already has this capability, but they won't blow it on something so stupid.

Ethereum already has quantum resistant algorithms ready to go for each part of the system but they perform worse so it doesn't make sense to start using them until quantum computers are more real. There is no long term threat from quantum computing to Ethereum or other systems like it.
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