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The biggest crypto lending company is a ponzi scheme

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Re: The biggest crypto lending company is a ponzi scheme

#121

Post by marginalia_nu »

tomp wrote: post #43
obayesshelton wrote: post #15

Crypto and NFT is one big ponzi scheme. Who on earth is spending $000,000s on a virtual ship? I sense it is a case of somebody close to the NFT or virtual world buying the asset and making out it is a great thing and then selling it on quickly. Many a scam involves somebody from the group buying something so the unwilling feel like it safe. As always, don't be left holding the baby.

How is spending $1 000 000 on a "virtual image" (NFT) any different than spending it on a Picasso? There are equivalent/superior copies of both readily available, but some people value provenance ...

It isn't. The fine art market is a scam, too.

Re: The biggest crypto lending company is a ponzi scheme

#122

Post by isoprophlex »

dfadsadsf wrote: post #110
isoprophlex wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get this, you'd have to be entirely crazy to do this right? Why post twice the loan value as collateral? Why not sell half of the crypto assets instead? On the assumption that suddenly your crypto can go to the moon?! It might equally well lose its value...

You have to pay taxes if you sell. Loaning against collateral is tax minimization strategy

Interesting angle, I hadn't considered that. Thanks.

Re: The biggest crypto lending company is a ponzi scheme

#123

Post by pjc50 »

hackingforfun wrote: post #73
daniel-thompson wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it will remain very useful as a medium of exchange The only current usecase I'm aware of for crypto as a medium of exchange is for criminals, i.e. ransomware / extortion / etc.

I see this point rehashed on HN over and over. I'd love if there was a more productive discussion of cryptocurrencies. I don't think they are going away anytime soon. Too many technologists and others are thinking about them now. I personally think store of value is a strong use case, at least for those of us who consider them to have value. Just wondering, what would it take for you (and others who share similar vie…

> store of value is a strong use case

The "change my mind" criterion for this would be actual price stability. That is, a significant market for goods and services which can be bought at a fixed crypto price over a period of a year or more with zero price variation. People getting paid salary in fixed crypto denominations. People taking out 10-year mortgages in fixed crypto denominations at interest rates comparable to fiat mortgages.

It is feasible that cryptocurrency might be more stable than, say, the Bolivar. It is not feasible that it will be more stable than the dollar.

If you want a really concrete use case, suppose you want to buy a new Macbook next year and you want to save on a weekly basis. If you'd done that over various periods over the last year you'd end up with between 150% and 70% of the price of the Macbook. Now, so long as "number go up" you're winning ...

Re: The biggest crypto lending company is a ponzi scheme

#124

Post by zikduruqe »

sharemywin wrote: post #72
daniel-thompson wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it will remain very useful as a medium of exchange The only current usecase I'm aware of for crypto as a medium of exchange is for criminals, i.e. ransomware / extortion / etc.

When your country's currency is shit. you would probably view it differently.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7lm7IHnKDw

Re: The biggest crypto lending company is a ponzi scheme

#125

Post by anonymoushn »

infecto wrote: post #98
anonymoushn wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If these returns were true then institutional investors would use them. But they do seem like they should have collapsed years ago. After trying to raise money for arb strategies with higher returns than Celsius all year I'm really tired of hearing this.

What are you trying to say?

There's no actual mechanism that matches capital to risk-adjusted returns. Reasoning as if there is reliably leads to incorrect conclusions.

Celsius is probably a scam, but the reasoning above is not why.

Re: The biggest crypto lending company is a ponzi scheme

#126

Post by gentleman11 »

marginalia_nu wrote: post #45
avrionov wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This all true, but avast and the vpn industry are 2 orders of magnitude smaller than the crypto.

Crypto sure has a vested intrerest in making it seem that way: https://www.investopedia.com/news/are-cryptos-high-trading-v...

> But there's a problem here: Some cryptocurrency exchanges have been faking their volume numbers in order to raise the visibility of their businesses and bring in more customers. That's easy to do in the less-than-transparent world of global crypto trading.

> Now, an effort is underway to force the exchanges to report real numbers.

I can’t believe this isn’t fraud of some sort already

Re: The biggest crypto lending company is a ponzi scheme

#127

Post by gzer0 »

marcinjachymiak wrote: post #77

I'm not a fan or user of Celsius, but this is an incredibly inflammatory title with very little evidence to back it up. Claims like that demand greater proof. This is an incredibly lazy article The author pretty much failed to do any research on DeFi investments (point 3 in the OP). Compound and Aave are just 2 of many places investors place their assets, and are definitely near the lower end of APYs. Badger, which C…

> Where do these high APYs come from? Well a lot of it is coming from incentives of these protocols and speculation in those native assets. But the author doesn't even know that, so I won't bother steelmanning his argument

Is this not the very definition of a ponzi scheme? The returns coming from "incentives" of these protocols and "speculation" in those native assets sounds very ponzi-like to me.

Re: The biggest crypto lending company is a ponzi scheme

#128

Post by adam_arthur »

marcinjachymiak wrote: post #117
vesinisa wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So instead of actually debunking his arguments you published a handwavy reply? I very much think that if someone is offering insanely high ROIs but does not divulge how the value is created, you can safely assume it's a scam, and simply pointing out the disparity suffices as proof to me at least.

I don't know what happens behind the scenes at Celsius. I do know there are many ways to get those high ROIs in DeFi. With zero evidence suggesting they are lying about returns, the charitable guess I can make is that they are getting high DeFi returns and giving their customers slightly lower ones after taking a cut.

Can you explain some of the ways then?

Not the user facing side, but the backend/underlying part that generates the returns necessary to sustain those yields.

Re: The biggest crypto lending company is a ponzi scheme

#129

Post by photochemsyn »

Lending cryptocurrency as a business model seems like absolute nonsense to be honest. My entire understanding is that the bitcoin model isn't compatible with investment capitalism, nor is it compatible with high-volume low-value transactions (i.e. buying food at grocery stores). It's only real purpose is as an independent store of value, for example you might convert $US 10K to Bitcoin and then just sit on it, not really expecting it to decline or increase in value in terms of actual goods/services purchasing power. Not that I know all that much about it, just what I've seen so far.

Re: The biggest crypto lending company is a ponzi scheme

#130

Post by janeroe »

arch-ninja wrote: post #22
bovermyer wrote: post #9

Personally, I still feel that cryptocurrency in general is a net negative for the human race.

Net negative for most, net positive for a few, good learning experience for all.

> Net negative for most, net positive for a few, good learning experience for all.

You mean the printing press, right?

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