Bitcoin is a Ponzi

Post by bb88 » Thu, Oct 07, 2021, 6:13 PM UTC

graeme wrote: post #511

bb88 wrote: post #483

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> 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…

Yeah pretty much. Except the miners don’t take the money, they burn the money. Mining has low barriers to entry (more or less) so you’d expect low profit margins. And the major costs are energy (lost forever) and ASICs (unfit for other purpose) So while most industries have costs that feed back into economy, mining costs are just burnt. But yeah beyond that it’s just musical chairs. Depends entirely on inflows. And t…

Post by stiltzkin » Thu, Oct 07, 2021, 7:42 PM UTC

graeme wrote: post #526

scottyp21 wrote: post #480

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Many of these same arguments apply to gold. Do you think gold is (mostly) useless today? If yes, when did it stop becoming useful? Do you think it was always useless?

When you mine gold, you get gold, and gold is nice. If we could magically make 100x the gold, that would be great! Current gold investors would be sad but it would be a win for the world. Bitcoin mining produces heat, and maintains the bitcoin network. It doesn’t actually increase the supply of anything: the total number of bitcoins is arbitrary. The real value is whatever the network produces (happiness in its hodle…

Post by rufus_foreman » Thu, Oct 07, 2021, 8:28 PM UTC

newacct583 wrote: post #607

rufus_foreman wrote: post #200

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No it is not a pedantic evasion, with a Ponzi scheme, you get sent money. On a regular legally defined basis. That money has to come from somewhere. Bitcoin doesn't have to send you a check every month or it collapses.

> with a Ponzi scheme, you get sent money Still pedantry. You're arguing that it's not a Ponzi scheme NOT because it funds promises to existing players with money coming in from new players (which is pretty much the standard definition), but because TECHNICALLY they have to "sell" their coins to get paid. That technicality doesn't change the direction the money is flowing. It's just not relevant.

Post by markdown » Thu, Oct 07, 2021, 8:45 PM UTC

glenvdb wrote: post #580

markdown wrote: post #467

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> The properties of it being difficult/impossible to confiscate and its privacy make it valuable in oppressive regimes. A refugee could store their wealth in Bitcoin, leave their country, settle somewhere else, and access their Bitcoin without the risk of it being confiscated during the journey, because they can simply memorise the seed phrase (24 words). LOL, who in those countries would sell them bitcoin? You've pu…

Alex Gladstein has written about this at length. He works for the Human Rights Foundation and advocates Bitcoin for its humanitarian use cases. He has spoken to many people in these types of countries to get their take on it. See for yourself... https://bitcoinmagazine.com/authors/alexgladstein

Post by KETpXDDzR » Thu, Oct 07, 2021, 9:11 PM UTC