51–60 of 328 posts
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> It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it. > - Upton Sinclair
Is this a pro or con comment? Could be both I suppose.
And unfortunately nobody's salary depends on preventing other people from shilling get-rich-quick pyramid schemes. (Except maybe for dang's.)
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> Who is at the top that gains from all of this? In a ponzi scheme the people higher in the pyramid are anyone who joined in the past and is trying to grow it. You could say Satoshi with his early mining and various other "insiders", whether their identity is known or not, are at the top. I don't necessarily agree that it's a ponzi scheme, although I'm sympathetic with many anti-crypto arguments, but that's the reaso…
Ponzi scheme? Perhaps not. So maybe we need a new word? It's a new invention, and thus might require a new lexicon to capture its essence.
Nice job. Now if only some people would see the difference between an actual ponzi scheme like this one and bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. That would be nice.
The common characteristic is that "early adopters" get disproportionately large returns compared to later adopters. Indeed those later adopters are financing the exit of the participants who "got in first". In this way it's like a Ponzi scheme, but the same could be said for stocks. You might call the above a simplification; that is fine -- my point is that this is a (inaccurate) linguistic shorthand -- calling somet…
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There isn't any difference.
I'm very sympathetic with many of the "anti"-crypto arguments but to say there is no difference between BitConnect and Bitcoin/Ethereum is just wrong. You might believe their value is based on a similar concept, pyramid scheme type construct, but they still have massive differences. Bitcoin/Ethereum/etc actually do /something/ (even if you ultimately come to the conclusion that that something is bad).
Crypto may well be the biggest solution looking for a problem I've ever seen. Apart from the obvious issues (eg energy expenditure) the one myth that needs to die about crypto is that it is extragovernmental and indictments such as this and the Bitfinex laundering case recently should underline that. The simple fact is that the developed world could shut down what little utility cryptocurrencies (and NFTs) have tomor…
Kearney, NE seems like a popular destination too, for crypto mining.
https://www.npr.org/2022/02/24/1081252187/bitcoin-cryptocurr...
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> Who is at the top that gains from all of this? In a ponzi scheme the people higher in the pyramid are anyone who joined in the past and is trying to grow it. You could say Satoshi with his early mining and various other "insiders", whether their identity is known or not, are at the top. I don't necessarily agree that it's a ponzi scheme, although I'm sympathetic with many anti-crypto arguments, but that's the reaso…
Ponzi scheme? Perhaps not. So maybe we need a new word? It's a new invention, and thus might require a new lexicon to capture its essence.
Crypto may well be the biggest solution looking for a problem I've ever seen. Apart from the obvious issues (eg energy expenditure) the one myth that needs to die about crypto is that it is extragovernmental and indictments such as this and the Bitfinex laundering case recently should underline that. The simple fact is that the developed world could shut down what little utility cryptocurrencies (and NFTs) have tomor…
I think this hinges on what problem you identify. If someone identifies centralized financial systems as bad, even if they're efficient, the problem is real and the solution fits the problem. If you contest this, as many do for good reason, it becomes a solution in search of a problem.
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Let's assume for the faith of your argument that Bitcoin is a ponzi scheme. Who is at the top that gains from all of this? And how are you gonna indict "them" when seemingly no one knows who they are?
Let's just agree to call it a distributed digital Ponzi scheme used for ledgerdemain.
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If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck... Even without the Ponzi scheme and market manipulation; Proof-of-Work based cryptocurrencies are an ecological catastrophe. Other Proof-of-Something™ currencies do not bring much to the table either. At some point it's only normal there's a push back against cryptocurrencies.
That’s why the vast majority of L1s are not proof of work.
Also in the last 10 years, only a handful of tokens have had a somewhat usable blockchain which grinds to a halt anytime people share pictures of cats or monkeys and we're told to wait for another year or two for an update to whatever protocol is trendy at the moment. Rinse and repeat every year. Also also, every other year a cryptocurrency comes along and professes to be the second coming of God with solutions to problems with don't have.
So no, not interested.