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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

#381

Post by gentleman11 »

claaams wrote: post #120
gentleman11 wrote: post #10

We keep expecting crypto to die but then again, we still have antivirus software that is spyware (avast), a scammy vpn industry, and a thriving anti vax movement. No matter how absurd it is, it might stick around for a long time now

Im naive, can you explain the scammy VPN industry to me?

Well, the biggest example is when Facebook made a vpn to protect privacy but used it to data mine all your internet activity. There are a dozen or two dozen other companies doing this on a smaller scale

https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/29/facebook-project-atlas/?gu...

https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/21/facebook-removes-onavo/

https://www.pcmag.com/news/7-vpn-services-found-recording-us...

Re: The biggest crypto lending company is a ponzi scheme

#382

Post by nextaccountic »

hackingforfun wrote: post #328
nextaccountic wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Crypto is a very volatile asset, it doesn't seem good for actually storing value. It would be great if the demand was organic and driven by consumption. This could stabilize the price. Right now it's mostly speculative.

Do you think that it's possible that as the market cap of crypto grows, the volatility goes down? I believe this applies to traditional markets as well. It just takes more money to sway the price. Also if people see value in it, vs other assets, wouldn't they want to hold it, so wouldn't value be stored in it? Curious if you have any thoughts about that.

The trouble with the usual measures of market cap, trading volume, etc. is that so much of it is faked. And lot of crypto is premined or is otherwise held by whales that don't have much use of it unless they find someone to dump their coins, and they have both means and motive to swing the market. So it's entirely possible that crypto market cap continues to "grow" but volatility just stay the same.

But otherwise, yeah, if there's enough people to make the whales look comparatively smaller, it may get more stable.

Re: The biggest crypto lending company is a ponzi scheme

#383

Post by haskellandchill »

delabay wrote: post #331
Daishiman wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you're not being a skeptic here, you're just gambling. Skepticism considers the ways in which you assumptions could have plausible positive or negative outcomes. I see the entirety of the DeFi "industry" being regulated to death considering how many of these protocols and DAOs behave exactly like securities or replicate existing legal structures; I see no reason that governments will not seek to regulate them the…

Regulation will come - folks on both sides are clamoring for it. Crypto industry folks are begging the SEC to do its job, but US Gov departments need to wrap up their infighting and territory division first. Stephen Diehl is the most eloquent skeptic I've found (stephendiehl.com/blog.html). Much of the complaints point to unregistered securities fleecing retail (absolutely happening) or just overall complaints that h…

You also expect to profit disproportionately from onboarding those less fortunate you refer to. How is it fair to them or anyone? Besides the technical limitations of blockchain I find the distribution of rewards grotesque.

Re: The biggest crypto lending company is a ponzi scheme

#384

Post by brandonmenc »

asdfsd234234444 wrote: post #216
onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Picasso is truly scarce. The NFT is artificially scarce.

What does that even mean? You can produce a copy of Picasso that is indistinguishable from an original. You can produce counterfeits of most "real world" items that are indistinguishable.

It means that if I burn your original Picasso, you lose the money - even if you still have a piece of paper that says you own the original.

This isn't difficult to understand.

Re: The biggest crypto lending company is a ponzi scheme

#385

Post by delabay »

haskellandchill wrote: post #383
delabay wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regulation will come - folks on both sides are clamoring for it. Crypto industry folks are begging the SEC to do its job, but US Gov departments need to wrap up their infighting and territory division first. Stephen Diehl is the most eloquent skeptic I've found (stephendiehl.com/blog.html). Much of the complaints point to unregistered securities fleecing retail (absolutely happening) or just overall complaints that h…

You also expect to profit disproportionately from onboarding those less fortunate you refer to. How is it fair to them or anyone? Besides the technical limitations of blockchain I find the distribution of rewards grotesque.

Odd perspective to express on a website which is founded upon being early to societal trends.

Re: The biggest crypto lending company is a ponzi scheme

#386

Post by SaltyFetus »

_xnmw wrote: post #202

For those who believe "crypto is too big to fail", or the genie is out of the bottle, or that crypto concepts have become so engrained and popular that it's not possible to stop, I'd like to point out that Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scam lasted for 30+ years. People built entire lives on his very professional-seeming "business". Scams can go on for a very long time, and very large numbers of people can build their whole l…

There is nothing of substance in this comment; its taken you two paragraphs to say "I think its a scam and I don't like it". Moralizing and vague threats make up the rest.

Re: The biggest crypto lending company is a ponzi scheme

#387

Post by adam_arthur »

___q wrote: post #339
adam_arthur wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"A Ponzi scheme is an investment fraud that pays existing investors with funds collected from new investors" Explain how pump and dumping penny stocks doesn't apply? I agree that it's a bit different in nature than most Ponzi Schemes due to lack of central entity orchestrating it, but the net effect is the same in the end. You get in early, you win, you get in late, you lose. Even if we call it something else, it's c…

> Explain how pump and dumping penny stocks doesn't apply? That's just market manipulation. Going on Twitter and saying "BTC to the moon!" isn't a Ponzi. It requires an actor (like Charles Ponzi) to take new investors' money and pay it to old. Bitconnect was Ponzi scheme, not in some abstract sense. > You get in early, you win, you get in late, you lose. So vague it applies to everything that pays interest...

Not true.

If I buy a stock or a bond, I get the dividend payment regardless of when I get in. It doesn't require you to be early, just to accept what the current value proposition is.

You'll make more money if you time it right, but you get some intrinsic value from it even if no future investors ever come along.

Or more obviously, buying rental property. Cap rates change over time, but you always get some real return.

And "pump and dump" implies a coordinated scheme. Usually they'll create groups/networks and call for everybody to buy in. But they tend to frontrun the group. We can call that something other than Ponzi, but at the end of the day, the later buyers are paying off the earlier buyers, and it's zero sum.. the underlying relationship is the same

Re: The biggest crypto lending company is a ponzi scheme

#388

Post by quietbritishjim »

rodiger wrote: post #323
giantrobot wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Gated experiences, communities, in-game items, in-game art, etc is the driving force. And for digitally-native art, there's never been a better way to sell/trade it while preserving provenance. It's a bunch of unnecessary synthetic scarcity. What the fuck is good about that? Why do you want to sign on to a model where you're going to be nickel and dimed for everything you see? As a consumer why do you want to pay f…

> What the fuck is good about that? I think it's more an economic incentive for digital creators who have historically been nickel and dimed every step of the way trying to monetize their work. > As a consumer why do you want to pay for things that have zero marginal cost? The value for a consumer is less about paying and more about earning (which sounds dystopic to some, but is very exciting imo). And beyond that, l…

> I think it's more an economic incentive for digital creators

I don't understand. NFTs are not hooked up to the legal system of copyright, so how is it ensured that the "digital creators" are the ones that are rewarded? If you create an amazing image, what is to stop me getting the original NFT (by doing something like mining it? sorry I'm not familiar with the terminology) before you do and selling that on without rewarding you? Or, even if you did make the NFT first, what's to stop me altering one pixel or some irrelevant metadata of the image to allow a district NFT being created and selling that instead?

Another commenter said that NFTs are (sometimes? usually? always?) not even derived from the work itself but simply some URL that points at it. That crazy! What's to stop me making another URL for the same work (either hosting it separately or just redirecting to your URL) and making an NFT for that? What if my hosted version outlives yours? The whole idea is so totally ludicrous that I don't see how it's gotten this far.

Unless there's something huge I'm missing (which I'll admit is possible), it's obvious that NFTs are totally useless for this goal of rewarding digital creators. Traditional copyright, while flawed, at least makes an attempt at rewarding the creator of the actual work.

Re: The biggest crypto lending company is a ponzi scheme

#389

Post by prepend »

anonymoushn wrote: post #125
infecto wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The invisible hands do a pretty good job of matching. Any true market inefficiencies get discovered and fixed really quickly as it’s like a giant big bounty.

When something seems too good to be true, it could be that I know something that they rest of the world doesn’t. Or it could also be that it’s bullshit.

Re: The biggest crypto lending company is a ponzi scheme

#390

Post by stickfigure »

codebolt wrote: post #325
ricardobayes wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is nothing wrong with the global financial system. I can already send money electronically to anyone by way of bank transfer. In Europe, it's even easier, faster and cheaper than sending crypto.

Indeed, and wiring money overseas has also never been easier. I regularly send money from Norway to family in Africa using online remittance services (there's quite a few to pick from) and it usually takes less than 15 minutes for the money to go through (and they get a pick up notice from their bank). Because of competition, the FX rates are very good. No crypto involved.

I'm guessing this is pretty dependent on which country in Africa you're sending to. Probably not Zimbabwe?
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