Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Bitcoins: The Second Biggest Ponzi Scheme in History

garynorth.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 306 posts

Re: Bitcoins: The Second Biggest Ponzi Scheme in History

#101

Post by blahbl4hblahtoo »

sz4kerto wrote: post #91
theboywho wrote: post #80

Important to note: The author of the article, Gary North, is the same guy who predicted a "failure of the global Information Technology (IT) infrastructure and that it would precipitate severe disruption and the complete collapse of the international economy, leaving American Christians to restore society following the collapse." Also, he "favors capital punishment for a range of offenders; these include women who li…

I just don't see how is one's view on abortion validate or invalidate his views on Bitcoins. Care to explain?

The pattern of the mans publicly disclosed ideas really paint a picture of who he is...in this case a right wing reactionary ideologue.

Re: Bitcoins: The Second Biggest Ponzi Scheme in History

#102

Post by kleiba »

theboywho wrote: post #95
sz4kerto wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just don't see how is one's view on abortion validate or invalidate his views on Bitcoins. Care to explain?

His views on other topics do not necessarly validate or invalidate his views on Bitcoin, but these views can not be ignored and as I said in my comment, they should be taken into account while forming your own opinion about his article.

I still don't understand why they should.

Re: Bitcoins: The Second Biggest Ponzi Scheme in History

#103

Post by mason240 »

blahbl4hblahtoo wrote: post #37

Austrian economics are so painful. Its amazing to me how impervious to contrary evidence its adherents are... their blind faith in their core beliefs are so unshakable. Every time I read one of them say that money arose from markets I wonder why they don't sponsor a bill that sets up an agency like NOAA that watches for dangerous conditions in this primeval force called "the market" so that people can be warned when…

Are you saying that you don't believe that people can buy, sell, or trade with each other unless government is involved?

Re: Bitcoins: The Second Biggest Ponzi Scheme in History

#104

Post by dgregd »

mike_esspe wrote: post #79
dgregd wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It should be called a bubble, not a ponzi scheme. This is a first bubble which is popular mainly among tech geeks :) What is strange, nobody is asking what problem Bitcoin really solves. As far I know it failed as a protection for silk road types. Silk road was compromised and Bitcoin didn't helped them.

It solves 2% credit card fee. It's enough for success at the level of at least Visa & MC. (And as a bonus it solves a lot of other problems too).

> It solves 2% credit card fee.

Are you sure? There were a lot of Bitcoin wallet servers compromised lately. I guess that for a really well secured wallet server you have to pay something. In case of thefts, people will want some kind of insurance and so on.

Bitcoin, compared to credit cards, functions as a decentralized system. Is it really cheaper than centralized system in terms of transaction costs? I mean computing power, required hardware and software.

Re: Bitcoins: The Second Biggest Ponzi Scheme in History

#105

Post by tfb »

sz4kerto wrote: post #91
theboywho wrote: post #80

Important to note: The author of the article, Gary North, is the same guy who predicted a "failure of the global Information Technology (IT) infrastructure and that it would precipitate severe disruption and the complete collapse of the international economy, leaving American Christians to restore society following the collapse." Also, he "favors capital punishment for a range of offenders; these include women who li…

I just don't see how is one's view on abortion validate or invalidate his views on Bitcoins. Care to explain?

It serves as evidence that he is an uneducated idiot who lacks common sense.

Re: Bitcoins: The Second Biggest Ponzi Scheme in History

#106

Post by Aqueous »

paulgb wrote: post #32

Is this the same Gary North who predicted the collapse of society from the Y2K bug? > North predicted a Y2K catastrophe in print and online,[31] and predicted that a Y2K date-rollover failure of the global Information Technology (IT) infrastructure would precipitate severe disruption and the complete collapse of the international economy, leaving American Christians to restore society following the collapse. http://e…

So I should do exactly the opposite of whatever Gary North says. Done!

Re: Bitcoins: The Second Biggest Ponzi Scheme in History

#107

Post by Aqueous »

pyalot2 wrote: post #55
loceng wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you buy Bitcoin at $1,000 and it stays above $1,000 ... and then at $100,000 per Bitcoin value if it only fluctuates $200 per day, that's not really volatile.

Yes, but the volatility nobody is debating is that it was below $1 in 2011 before it shot up above $33 and then came down to $2 at the bottom again. A similar development could be observed earlier 2013 where it started the year around $10, then shot up to $266 and came down again to $80. It should clear to everybody who holds bitcoin, that there is massive volatility, and that you might buy your coins at a time, whic…

The more people who use BitCoin the less volatile it will be, the more BitCoin tokens will be spread across a large number of individual actors, the less a single actor can dictate price fluctuations.

Re: Bitcoins: The Second Biggest Ponzi Scheme in History

#108

Post by Aqueous »

From the BitCoin FAQ (http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/FAQ#Is_Bitcoin_a_Ponzi_scheme.3F):

Is Bitcoin a Ponzi scheme?

In a Ponzi Scheme, the founders persuade investors that they’ll profit. Bitcoin does not make such a guarantee. There is no central entity, just individuals building an economy.

A ponzi scheme is a zero sum game. Early adopters can only profit at the expense of late adopters. Bitcoin has possible win-win outcomes. Early adopters profit from the rise in value. Late adopters, and indeed, society as a whole, benefit from the usefulness of a stable, fast, inexpensive, and widely accepted p2p currency.

The fact that early adopters benefit more doesn't alone make anything a Ponzi scheme. All good investments in successful companies have this quality.

Post reply on HN