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Bitcoin is a Ponzi

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Re: Bitcoin is a Ponzi

#481

Post by russianbandit »

bb88 wrote: post #127
bugzz wrote: post #93

> By that definition, gold too is a ponzi. No, gold clearly fails to satisfy that definition on two counts. > First, few if any gold investors have expectations of profits. They generally invest in gold as a hedge -- a "store of value" -- that they hope will retain its value in case other assets go sour. I believe Bitcoin has potential to become the "new" gold. It's better in many ways. Does that mean I can only buy…

I can exchange dollars for either other dollars or gold. Neither of which necessarily need the goodness (or greed) of society to constantly care and feed it. Banks existed long before the internet did, and in a post-apocalyptic crunch we could always go back.

In post-apocalyptic crunch we are likely to go back to food, water and ammo. You and I will likely be long dead before society reverts to something like gold, so I doubt gold as post-apocalyptic hedge.

Re: Bitcoin is a Ponzi

#482

Post by mftb »

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…

> Goods and services provided by humans have no intrinsic value but become precious simply there being demand by other humans.

This incorrect. I can purchase a home or food from humans and they have intrinsic value. If whatever market they were purchased on collapses, I simply live in the home and eat the food to realize their value, no further transacting required. Similarly with services I can pay for someone to build the home and harvest the food, the value is immediately realized because I can still eat, have a place to live and my time free to do other things. This is literally why the term "intrinsic" was uh, coined, to contrast these types of goods and services with things like precious metals which may have little intrinsic value.

Re: Bitcoin is a Ponzi

#483

Post by bb88 »

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…

> No. They instead take your money, buy coal, and burn it. Nothing is left.

Interesting, I never thought of it that way, and it makes sense.

Since money is not created or destroyed the balance sheet on inflows and outflows of BTC to dollars must be zero at all times. And some x% (which is variable) of it is transferred to miners which is the so-called "transaction" cost.

I guess there must be a point at which the bubble bursts, and that's when a run on BTC happens. At which point it should go swiftly down as the value of BTC has been taken out by the miners.

Re: Bitcoin is a Ponzi

#484

Post by [deleted] »

hackingforfun wrote: post #464
arcticbull wrote: post #432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I reject that thesis given the Chinese sure managed, in like a week. No Bitcoin in North Korea either. The longer we wait, the more painful it'll be.

China vs crypto has been going on since 2013 [1]. Open source, decentralized crypto is a direct competitor to China's CBDC, which they have already developed and are trying to distribute [2]. Of course China would want to squash all competition. Jerome Powell from the Federal Reserve said in a video from 9/30/21 that he has no intention to ban crypto like China did, although it sounds like stablecoins may be regulate…

[deleted]

Re: Bitcoin is a Ponzi

#485

Post by XorNot »

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…

> A refugee could store their wealth in Bitcoin, leave their country, settle somewhere else

Problem: Who is selling Bitcoin for local currency in an area where there is a problem which is generating refugees?

Sure - you can electronically send Bitcoin to people, but how is the seller going to receive local currency from a war torn region without being local themselves? And if they are local...why are they selling their Bitcoin?

Remember - this is an area presumably in some form of collapse. How is a refugee going to transact their savings to another party who can accept them safely in the first place (rather then say, just being robbed - presumably why they're fleeing).

Re: Bitcoin is a Ponzi

#486

Post by simondotau »

sb057 wrote: post #437
chowchowchow wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems to fluctuate quarterly and I was saying the article addresses the point and makes an argument that BTC is not “like gold” in this way because the majority of demand for gold comes from non-investors (which appears to be the case in I think most quarters but perhaps not most recently). Jewelry is its own category but it does have “utility” if viewed through the lens of human behavior across civilizations over ti…

>the majority of demand for gold comes from non-investors (which appears to be the case in I think most quarters but perhaps not most recently) There's actually been far more industrial usage proportionally recently than any prior year. Prior to 2020, the highest industrial usage year was 2016, at ~7%. The article is wrong; the VAST majority of the demand for gold does indeed come from investors. This is ignoring gol…

Gold's coveted status is fairly easy to identify. It's one of the few physical elements that is (a) somewhat rare and difficult to mine (b) has an exceptionally long shelf life, even under harsh conditions e.g. under ocean water and (c) can be authenticated with simple tests e.g. nitric acid.

Re: Bitcoin is a Ponzi

#487

Post by arcticbull »

reaperducer wrote: post #472
arcticbull wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't hold bitcoin because I think it'll go up in value, I hold it because I don't want someone to tell me I can't pay rent because ... well they can't tell me why, because "sorry, I don't have access to that information" Well you certainly can't do that with Bitcoin unless your landlord has a similarly anarchocapitalist worldview. You'd have to cash it out at an exchange and pay the individual in question. This…

You'd have to cash it out at an exchange and pay the individual in question. This choke point would leave you similarly locked out. Would it? The parent commenter was in the United States, and even in cities of about 1 million people, I've seen Bitcoin ATMs at chain supermarkets. Some were even integrated into the ubiquitous CoinStar machines at the front of the store.

I'm pretty sure all those Bitcoin ATMs are deposit-only. No withdrawals. There may be some two-way, but I suspect they're exceedingly rare.

Re: Bitcoin is a Ponzi

#489

Post by dusted »

While I agree that crypto[speculation] generally seems to have the structure of a Ponzi scheme, I don't see any problem with that, as I assume everyone participating has the same idea. It's just a matter of who has the guts to stay on for long enough to cash out big, who gives up too early, and who does not get off before the train crashes into the mountain.

Re: Bitcoin is a Ponzi

#490

Post by CheezeIt »

newswasboring wrote: post #431
lalaland1125 wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is the average fee across all transactions. Transaction fees are per kb of data so more complex transactions pay more. The amount transfered is irrelevant.

I'm sorry if I appear a bit dense, but this is the part of bitcoin I least understand. On an individual level, when transferring person to person, are the transactions ever more complex than just remove funds from here and add it to another wallet?

You might have multiple inputs or outputs for an ordinary payment. There are several other types, see https://developer.bitcoin.org/devguide/transactions.html#sta...
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