Bitcoin is a Ponzi

Post by feanaro » Thu, Oct 07, 2021, 7:01 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…

Post by seoulmetro » Thu, Oct 07, 2021, 7:01 AM UTC

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…

Post by hackingforfun » Thu, Oct 07, 2021, 7:06 AM UTC

arcticbull wrote: post #544

hackingforfun wrote: post #525

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think you can sell traditional investments like stocks in seconds unless it is within designated trading hours. Crypto you can trade 24/7, although fiat wires out to traditional bank accounts still operate within certain hours (at least in the US, maybe this is different elsewhere). I still hold a small amount of my portfolio in USD, even considering inflation, but this is because it's less volatile than cryp…

Stablecoins have counter-party risk. USDT is run by folks under investigation by the DOJ for bank fraud and was at various times not actually backed (sometimes by anything). And the scuttlebutt is USDC is currently under investigation by the SEC. [1] [1] https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/public-filing-from-crypto-...

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Oct 07, 2021, 7:14 AM UTC

gunshai wrote: post #510

bb88 wrote: post #483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 bub…

If you're so certain short it. The amount of wealth you would gain by being correct is immense. You should be spending every waking moment attempting to predict it. Something about anti btcers I don't get you'll wax how smart you are and how everyone else is dumb. Just put your money where your mouth is.

Post by fay59 » Thu, Oct 07, 2021, 7:18 AM UTC

cemerick wrote: post #334

fay59 wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I loathe Bitcoin, but that’s vastly wrong. As one counter-example, the Syrian civil war didn’t only displace poor people who never had anything to begin with; it displaced a lot of middle class families, made of engineers and doctors and such, who did have assets to their name but that were almost certainly incapable of taking it out of the country with them. It remains to be seen whether it would have been practical…

It is unfortunately quite factual that the vast majority of refugees worldwide functionally have no assets and often end up in debt at the end of their journey from home. Anecdotes of relative handfuls of affluent migrants are hardly compelling vis a vis the utility of e.g. BTC, especially given the lofty claims being made.