Bitcoin is a Ponzi • Hacker News Board

Re: Bitcoin is a Ponzi

#411

Post by hackingforfun » Thu, Oct 07, 2021, 5:41 AM UTC

arcticbull wrote: post #343

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…

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.…

There is no nipping this in the bud. That's the point. It's already too late.

Re: Bitcoin is a Ponzi

#412

Post by glenvdb » Thu, Oct 07, 2021, 5:42 AM UTC

zenbai wrote: post #295

glenvdb wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The anti-Bitcoin sentiment on HN is frankly baffling to me. It's one of the most exciting things happening in tech right now, and HN is at best ambivalent and at worst openly hostile to Bitcoin. Why wouldn't the tech crowd be excited about digital native money which is perfect for the Internet? Look at what's happening around the ecosystem with the Lightning Network, Impervious.AI, RGB etc. https://rgb-org.github.io/…

People just trying to justify to themselves why they didn't buy bitcoin at $100. Looking at the comments here it's almost like a political debate where they keep trying to come up with justifications.

Someone was telling me that the general problem with HN is that they're all very technically capable, so they look at Bitcoin, understand it from a technical perspective (not always true) and deem it as inferior to other technical solutions, like a centralised database.

The bit that's lacking is an understanding of money, and what makes certain types of money sound or unsound. It's easy to overlook the problems of fiat money because its all we've ever known.

What was it about gold that made it the dominant form of money for literally thousands of years? Why was it abandoned? How does Bitcoin solve the problems of gold and fiat?

Vijay Boyapati (ex-Google engineer) does a pretty good job of outlining this in his article.

https://vijayboyapati.medium.com/the-bullish-case-for-bitcoi...

I wish more people on HN would read it with an open mind.

Re: Bitcoin is a Ponzi

#413

Post by louloulou » Thu, Oct 07, 2021, 5:43 AM UTC

toephu2 wrote: post #320

louloulou wrote: post #233

Lol at most of HN thinking Bitcoin is a ponzi and the fractionally reserved US dollar monetary&banking system is not. It's been over a decade guys, try opening your eyes and your minds or you're going to go down with the ship.

The difference is USD is backed by the U.S. government. Bitcoin is backed by nothing.

I guess that's why it's fallen in value so much relative to the USD over the past decade.

Re: Bitcoin is a Ponzi

#414

Post by bb88 » Thu, Oct 07, 2021, 5:43 AM UTC

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…

> It's clear that the HN crowd does not like Bitcoin. So why keep reiterating similar arguments all over?

When we take a closer look at crypto it appears to be as corrupt or even more as the institutions it was trying to replace. Tether, of course, is the poster child of crypto corruption.

Re: Bitcoin is a Ponzi

#415

Post by 314 » Thu, Oct 07, 2021, 5:43 AM UTC

Oh wow. This is unbelievably bad.

Bitcoin may be a scam on so e level, but it is not a Ponzi scheme. The linked article seems to miss the most important property of such a scheme:

Incoming capital is misrepresented as returns and passed back to investors. Bitcoin does not pay dividends. There are no returns in Bitcoin, only pure capital speculation. As there are no returns, there is no misrepresentation of capital inflow as returns and no Ponzi scheme.

Bitcoin is more like a tulip...

Re: Bitcoin is a Ponzi

#416

Post by arthurcolle » Thu, Oct 07, 2021, 5:44 AM UTC

rebuilder wrote: post #206

arthurcolle wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Stolfi has been around the crypto scene a long time, long enough to have gotten a pretty good idea of what motivates people. The news media did not create the gold rush mentality around crypto, it has been there almost from the beginning. Go and read the bitcointalk forums for evidence, if you want.

I have been involved in crypto since 2013, I get it. But I have given up engaging in these conversations. You either get the anti-statist thesis and economic liberation angle or you don't. If you don't then OK, best of luck.

I like having spending power that isn't immediately based on CIA organized crime or boomers at the Fed/Treasury

Re: Bitcoin is a Ponzi

#417

Post by arcticbull » Thu, Oct 07, 2021, 5:44 AM UTC

graeme wrote: post #410

G3rn0ti wrote: post #289

In a Ponzi scheme, a fraudulent perpetrator takes your money (and the money of many others), gives some of that to early dropouts but takes the rest for himself . Ponzi schemers profit from lying to you where your money goes. With a decentralized digital asset there is no sole person or company that profits from just lying to you about where your Dollar goes in exchange for digitals. Sure, miners and exchanges make p…

> They do not pretend making your money work for you by some magical scheme. No. They instead take your money, buy coal, and burn it. Nothing is left. As you say, Ponzi schemers take money for themselves and keep it. Most of what Madoff stole was recovered, for instance. Whereas virtually 100% of all money invested into crypto has been burned by miners. This is pretty easy to model. So there’s nothing left to recover…

Indeed this is a new form of Ponzi scheme, and I agree with the authors use of the "quacks-like-a-duck" model.

> But if one wants to know whether bitcoin is a good investment, or just an old type of investment fraud with a new coat of paint, the legal definition is irrelevant. One must use a quacks-like-a-duck definition, that describes the mechanism through which fools and money are separated and the reasons why it is a fraud.

It's the world's first decentralized Ponzi scheme, where each participant cell need not understand the whole picture to achieve the end result. It's a financial cancer.

Re: Bitcoin is a Ponzi

#418

Post by arthurcolle » Thu, Oct 07, 2021, 5:45 AM UTC

px43 wrote: post #165

arthurcolle wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They'll make new quantum proof encryption - isn't this an active area of cryptography research? JQI at UMD, NIST's Quantum Computing Group - these teams must be doing something with all the grant money

QRL is a thing https://www.theqrl.org It uses XMSS, and does it fairly well.

I'm talking about real technology. I think I owned like 100K of these at some point lmao

Re: Bitcoin is a Ponzi

#419

Post by russianbandit » Thu, Oct 07, 2021, 5:45 AM UTC

whateveracct wrote: post #213

jliptzin wrote: post #147

Bitcoin is a lot of different things to a lot of different people. The fact that it satisfies a certain set of conditions of a Ponzi scheme does not invalidate the myriad current and future applications of crypto. The social security administration could also be considered a Ponzi scheme, but it still provides tremendous value to a lot of people.

LuLaRoe is a lot of different things to a lot of different people. The fact that it satisfies a certain set of conditions of a pyramid scheme does not invalidate the myriad current and future applications of MLM.

You are not wrong, but neither is MLM in and of itself.

Re: Bitcoin is a Ponzi

#420

Post by stevev » Thu, Oct 07, 2021, 5:46 AM UTC

That’s incorrect. One btc = One btc. Its value relative to fiat or usd is irrelevant. No one takes your btc away from you to give to another when you have custody of it.