Bitcoin is a Ponzi • Hacker News Board

Re: Bitcoin is a Ponzi

#371

Post by satoshiiii » Thu, Oct 07, 2021, 5:30 AM UTC

glenvdb wrote: post #139

richardatlarge wrote: post #6

I’ve discouraged friends from investing in CC as I could never see a material basis for value, present or future. I wonder what if anything exists that is similar that is not a Ponzi scheme. Ask yourself this: if you woke up in the morning to find BCs value had zeroed out, how surprised would you be

I would be absolutely shocked if Bitcoin's value ever dropped to zero. I can't see any conceivable way that happens at this point. Even a coordinated effort by the world's governments to "ban" it (they can't really ban it) would not drive its price to zero... if anything it might even have the inverse effect. Can you provide any conceivable way this would actually happen? Maybe an asteroid hitting Earth and wiping ou…

I got in to crypto years ago, I'm still holding a bag of BTCs right now, but not that much anymore, from 100% back then, now down to 20%ish, majority of my assets right now is in altcoins. Why? Aside from the waining market dominance, there is this nagging feeling of fear that it might signifficantly drop in value.

I am little bit paranoid of holding 100% in BTC, the reason for this is because of Satoshi Nakamoto still holding 1 million BTCs. Nobody knows who this guy is, if he's going to spend all his bag, that's a sure fire way of bringing down BTC significantly.

Anyway, I'm still in to BTC, it significantly changed my life. I wish Nakamoto would publicly burn most of what it is in his bag.

Re: Bitcoin is a Ponzi

#372

Post by arcticbull » Thu, Oct 07, 2021, 5:31 AM UTC

kaczordon wrote: post #354

luka-birsa wrote: post #310

Why are such articles constantly popping up on HN? It's clear that the HN crowd does not like Bitcoin. So why keep reiterating similar arguments all over? There is zero utility in the article shared. It states some anti crypto views and that's it. Even the author concedes that this is according to his own definition and not based on real life legal tests (which have of course shown that Bitcoin is not a ponzi). Just…

By this articles definition WeWork is a Ponzi scheme, as would most startups.

WeWork is, startups are not. This is also covered in the article.

Re: Bitcoin is a Ponzi

#373

Post by abecedarius » Thu, Oct 07, 2021, 5:31 AM UTC

glenvdb wrote: post #172

qaq wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes, the wrench technique will always ultimately win. https://xkcd.com/538/ But they have to know someone holds it in the first place. You can walk around with a seed phrase in your head and no one would know.

Also don't forget multisig or Shamir secret sharing.

Re: Bitcoin is a Ponzi

#374

Post by anonporridge » Thu, Oct 07, 2021, 5:31 AM UTC

qaq wrote: post #339

anonporridge wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, sufficiently oppressive regimes can confiscate bitcoin in a lot of situations. However, as soon as they start doing that to the first few people, what's going to stop everyone else from instantly sending their bitcoin to family and friends across the border for safe keeping?

So you or you child is being tortured but you are "happy" that your bitcoins are safe ? This whole thing omits the question of how a person under oppressive regime came into possession of bitcoin in the first place

It's more a matter of game theory.

With wealth like gold, land, oil, or any other physical resources, an oppressive regime can just kill all dissenters and take control of everything. The payoff to violence is huge.

But with a digital wealth like bitcoin, which can flee the country at the speed of light, even if the owners can't go with it, the payoff to violence evaporates. The oppressive regime that spends a lot of time and energy torturing and killing people will have no spoils to show for it.

Re: Bitcoin is a Ponzi

#375

Post by foepys » Thu, Oct 07, 2021, 5:31 AM UTC

kevinak wrote: post #360

dmoy wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What the shit? It costs $5 to spend any amount of Bitcoin? Is that for real? (I genuinely don't know, that just sounds so high)

No it's not real, the cost to do a simple transfer up until yesterday has been in the ballpark of 0.1-0.15. This very moment it's around $1. You can see the current estimated cost here: https://mempool.space In addition to that, there's always the Lightning Network as well wherein you can transact for fractions of pennies.

The lightning network only allows you to transact if you fund a channel first, which requires an on-chain Bitcoin transaction to create and eventually one to close, thus incurring transaction costs twice.

You should fund a LN channel for more than one transaction because you cannot change the channel funds after creation, so you better make sure enough is in it. This makes it unsuitable for things that require more than a tiny fraction of your monthly income, e.g. rent.

LN channels also need to be constantly monitored to not get scammed, which the LN whitepaper suggests you to pay third parties for.

The LN whitepaper completely obmits the routing problem, too. It more or less says "we don't want to think about that now". A network whitepaper that doesn't think about routing, imagine that.

Re: Bitcoin is a Ponzi

#376

Post by joeberon » Thu, Oct 07, 2021, 5:31 AM UTC

dmoy wrote: post #312

liamwire wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Per any transaction, regardless of size.

What the shit? It costs $5 to spend any amount of Bitcoin? Is that for real? (I genuinely don't know, that just sounds so high)

If you want to get it on the other side in a reasonable timeframe, yes

Re: Bitcoin is a Ponzi

#377

Post by ericd » Thu, Oct 07, 2021, 5:31 AM UTC

dmoy wrote: post #312

liamwire wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Per any transaction, regardless of size.

What the shit? It costs $5 to spend any amount of Bitcoin? Is that for real? (I genuinely don't know, that just sounds so high)

My understanding is that it requires the burning of a ludicrous amount of electricity to get a transaction written on the main chain.

Re: Bitcoin is a Ponzi

#378

Post by arcticbull » Thu, Oct 07, 2021, 5:32 AM UTC

zaidf wrote: post #361

arcticbull wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article literally covers each of those cases and explains exactly why those are not Ponzi schemes while Bitcoin is ([edit] under "Common Objections" - which should really read "Common Whataboutisms"). > By that definition, stocks too are ponzis. No. Stocks have an external source of revenue, namely the profit that the company makes by selling its products and services to customers (not investors); and these profi…

(Nevertheless, investing in gold at the current price seems unwise, since its price is many times its "natural" price as commodity...) You left out the most important and contentious part. It is not surprising because the author of the article itself made the single, most important point a fine print because it hurts their argument.

Oh, sorry, I didn't want my post to get long, however I also agree that investing in gold is unwise generally speaking. I don't believe in investing in unproductive assets period. Unintentional miss, and totally relevant, so thanks for adding that color.

Re: Bitcoin is a Ponzi

#379

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Oct 07, 2021, 5:32 AM UTC

imgabe wrote: post #358

arcticbull wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's great reasons not to. Unless we nip this in the bud, we face a potential repeat of the 1997 Albanian Ponzi crisis that brought about the total collapse of their economy. Everyone in Albania jumped in and started participating in a number of big Ponzi schemes. Their finance minister tried to stop them, so they threw him in jail. They then had a civil war about it, and the IMF had to drop in big bags of money.…

> This is what the maxis are after. When you find yourself saying that the people you disagree with are deliberately seeking catastrophic outcomes, it's time to take a step back and reconsider. I don't think anyone wants to destroy the global economy and cause a global war. Maybe the Bitcoin maxis are wrong about the long-term viability of Bitcoin, but I doubt very much they are some kind of nihilistic death cult ben…

[deleted]

Re: Bitcoin is a Ponzi

#380

Post by gtirloni » Thu, Oct 07, 2021, 5:32 AM UTC

px43 wrote: post #143

sailingparrot wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

First off, you're hand waving over every person who has ever used bitcoin to purchase anything, which is a lot of people buying a lot of stuff. When I started mining bitcoin no one was talking about it every have a USD value. It was just silly internet points that you could pass around to friends. I also know a lot of people who hold as a store of value believing that it will easily outlast the US dollar. Just becaus…

> which is a lot of people buying a lot of stuff.

Could you share some numbers?