I'm pretty sure people are holding onto bitcoins because they think it is going to go up in value.
The same is true of lots of kinds of assets. People hold Amazon stock because they think it is going to go up in value. Does that mean Amazon stock is a Ponzi? No, of course it doesn't. Your argument makes no sense.
It's not as if it can be used for anything else other than some sort of speculative asset with nothing backing it.
That's not true at all. I regularly use Bitcoin to pay for goods and services. If you a willing to wait for confirmations it doesn't even cost too much. I recently spent $22k worth of BTC for a $2 fee. That's less than 0.001% fee. I don't know of any other payment system with such low fees for large payments.
All tokens don't really have any other backing other than supply and demand.
That's not true. Some tokens are backed. USDT for instance is backed by USD. You really ought to fact-check your statements before posting.
At least bitconnect's model always worked despite all the bad press and made many people very rich.
Always worked? Is it still working now? I thought they cancelled their Ponzi lending program leaving many thousands of people holding the bag with almost worthless BCH tokens.I wouldn't say that is "working" for anyone other than the scam operators themselves.
I didn't invest much in it. Most of mine is in DavorCoin as they started by paying 2% a day and that only opened at the end of November (4 times as much as I ever invested in bitconnect but I still got all my investment back from them overall).
I've not looked at DavorCoin, but if there were paying 2% per day then I would be amazed if they're not just another Ponzi scam. I would recommend getting your money out of ttere as soon as possible, because there are only two possible outcomes: 1) you make a loss (which sucks) or 2) you make a profit from victims who stayed in too long (which sucks).
By the way, they obviously could always change terms for new loans instead of guaranteeing 0.25% at least for $10k plus forever but do you really think that is excessive?
They could change the terms. They did, in fact. The new terms are "no interest at all for anyone - no loans for anyone - forced buying of our BCC token at $363 even though it's worth 10 times less than that on the market". I really think 0.25% per day guaranteed is excessive. Find any program anywhere that pays 0.25% or more in USD terms without a limit on investment size that isn't a Ponzi. It just doesn't exist. 0.25% per day over 1 year compounded daily is 149%. No investment program guarantees 149% profit per year. Show me any legitimate operation promising to more than double your money each year. You can't.
If you work it out it's less than 2.5 times the investment amount a year. I'm pretty sure people who hold bitcoin expect it to go up more than that each year, some speculating it will go up to a millions dollars!
There's a difference between expecting a price to double and guarantee that it will. I wouldn't be surprised if the price of BTC doubles in the next year, but I also wouldn't be surprised if it halved. I'm definitely not going to promise to double anyone's USD value for them by holding their BTC for a year. What if the price goes down? What happens to my promise then? I'd be no better than BitConnect, keeping my promise while the price of BTC is rising, then cancelling it when the price drops.
As already mentioned, the bitconnect model also gave value by guaranteeing the investment amount in USD so people could invest in cryptos without worrying about their portfolio going down in value
that was the guarantee, but in practice it didn't work out. People who put $10k in recently ended up with less than $600 as BitConnect forced they to buy BCC tokens at $363 each. Those tokens are now trading for around $20 each. So much for not having to worry about your portfolio! Many people were almost totally wiped out because they believed BitConnect's guarantee.
Any sane person would prefer the bitconnect model than the bitcoin model.
Why? The BitConnect model was obviously unsustainable. You can't pay out 0.25% per day forever in dollar terms unless you're holding an asset which grows in value by more than 0.25% per day in dollar terms. For a while BCC and BTC were doing that, so BitConnect could keep paying and make a profit at the same time. But when BCC stopped growing in price it started costing BitConnect to honor their guarantee - and so they stopped. The Bitcoin model doesn't involve trusting some third party to keep its impossible promise, and so is inherently better.
They shut down due to all the idiots saying they were a Ponzi.
No, they shut down because it is mathematically impossible to keep paying 0.25% per day in dollar terms when your assets aren't growing at least that fast. There were a Ponzi. That's why people kept saying they were a Ponzi. Ponzi's almost always blame "FUD from the community" when they shut down. Doesn't make it true.
Look at the housing market and how many idiots also believe it always goes up.
Nothing always goes up. There are idiots everywhere.
Bitconnect's model wouldn't have failed as there was no reason for the price not to go up all the time until something forced them to end it.
BCC price only goes up as demand for it goes up. And demand for it only goes up if you can keep bringing new victims into the scam. Eventually you run out of idiots and the price falls. That's what happened.
Coin holders may have lost out in the end when the bubble burst but that's just the same as the current economy which goes in cycles of boom and bust. The difference is bitconnect would have had enough collateral to refund the guaranteed investments if they were allowed to run normally (remember that they wouldn't necessarily need to refund them all at once and the coin would probably rise again slowly after a crash - in the long term the lending could still just carry on after a BCC crash if they didn't face any legal issues). Obviously all coin holders take the risk of a crash but the investments would have been easily guaranteed if it wasn't made to shut down.
I've explained already why they wouldn't ever be able to refund everyone's dollar value.
I forgot to mention that apparently bitconnect are working on refunding those who came in the last couple of months and didn't have enough time to get their investment back... not sure what they will do but they certainly have enough profit to do that.
"Apparenty"? I'll believe it when I see it. I would hope that most victims have learned their lesson and no longer trust the word of known scammers. I would recommend selling any BCC as soon as possible while the price is still non-zero.
Thanks 
