What I'm trying to say is, some amount of disagreement is to be expected. But, yeah, the aggressive, personal tone that developed pretty soon isn't your fault.
Do you concur with him that Bitcoin is a pyramid scheme ?
I have nothing against someone who knows how to make money & diversify his/her portfolio, but when someone talks nonsense its worth pointing that out to them.
The term "pyramid scheme" is charged, and often equated with "Ponzi scheme".
At least as an investment, Bitcoin
is a pyramid scheme (though not a Ponzi scheme), in the sense that the earlier you got in, the more your investment will be worth, and without new blood entering, your investment doesn't grow.
The big difference to the usual pyramid schemes though is that in our case, it is just the bootstrapping phase of a peer to peer currency/store of wealth. In other words: it
has to be a pyramid scheme, because it needs to start from nothing, and aims to grow to capture a huge market.
Lets say an very early adopter has paid lots of money for his mining equipment and bills but has chosen not to sell any of his bitcoins. If tomorrow bitcoin price collapses he will have a worse faith than someone who joined a year later than him but sold his bitcoins. Therefore In order to call it a pyramid scheme those early adopters should
1. make a financial gain bigger than the adopters that joined after him
and
2. have a GUARANTEED PROFIT from the fact that others joined later. In our early adopter case neither is true. This could be the case with many bitcoiners which haven't yet recovered their investment which they made into mining while others who traded on the exchanges but joined later than them made much more money.
Bitcoin is not a pyramid scheme because
3. there's not a level of differentiation between joining dates of participants, only that you acquire more knowledge of the inner workings of Bitcoin.
also
4. you don't have to make a payment to join, you can merely offer your services in return for bitcoins and doesn't require you to buy or mine them, hence no initial payment is required for you to join. Overstock for example keeps 10% of bitcoins for their products. They haven't investment anything into bitcoin but still they can interact with some of the earliest adopters without Bitcoin making any distinctions between them.
-well 4 years ago when they first wanted to valuate Bitcoin they took the mining cost average as an entry price, the demand was low so that was somehow fair, $1 was worth around 1300
BTC but today the mining cost doesn't have so much to do with the Bitcoin valuation, it is supply and demand what controls the price today, lets say you bought an ASIC for $10K which would mine around 10
BTC in its life time, the price of Bitcoin has to be more than $1000 for you to break even not to mention the costs of mining and the profit you wish to acquire, the statement above means that the price of Bitcoin has to be $1000 for you to break even and not should be, the price of Bitcoin will be where the demand meets the supply or what is the best bidder is willing to pay, to make it easy to understand: If I mined my coins 2 years ago, the mining cost for a bitcoin was less than $5, and if I dumped now I would ruin your investment and still make huge profit, this is one bad side of hoarding.
1- anyone joins before you will make more money than you and everyone will follow (pyramid scheme), for example if you joined in 2010 when Bitcoin was worth pennies and invested $1000 you would make more than someone who joined in 2012 and invested $1000 when the price was $10 and he himself would make more than someone who joined summer 2013 and invested $1000 when the price was at $100 which also would make more that someone who joined November 2013 and invested $1000 when the price was $1000..
2- only Miners who started mining last year in the ASIC era lost investments or didn't make ROI in terms of Bitcoin (except avalon Batch1 customers and ASIC manufacturers), I mined with graphics cards and made a decent profit, then I retired my miners mid last year. and not all adopters who joined last year lost money, I happen to know many people who joined from January-September 2013 that made good profits, only people who bought at more than $700 are losing now and have to wait for their investment to pay back. and for that to happen pray for a new wave of adopters to join ASAP.
3- of course there is a difference in joining date, look at 1 ( my initial investment was around 3000€) for the same investment today (in terms of Bitcoin cost) you wouldn't come close to what the same investment would make you if invested 2 years ago.
4- a merchant accepting Bitcoin as payment and holding the bitcoin is the same as a new user joining, you have to understand what is money and why money have value, so merchants are exchanging goods and services for Bitcoin which give Bitcoin a value against these goods and services. same goes for your Fiat, it holds value only when you exchange it for goods or services otherwise you hold just a peace of paper or a promise from your government that paper has a purchasing power, but we all know that merchants doesn't keep the Bitcoins and chose and cash out the payment received with payment processors for zero risk, they add Bitcoin only because of a new userbase which is worst for Bitcoin price especial now that the adoption is declining.
What I'm trying to say is, some amount of disagreement is to be expected. But, yeah, the aggressive, personal tone that developed pretty soon isn't your fault.
Do you concur with him that Bitcoin is a pyramid scheme ?
I have nothing against someone who knows how to make money & diversify his/her portfolio, but when someone talks nonsense its worth pointing that out to them.
of course it is, do your math and grow up.
....bla...bla...bla..bla....
you are off-topic...
again.