Topic: Bitcoin is not a Ponzi. But sometimes it is marketed like one. - page 3. (Read 1118 times)

There is nothing completely used by everyone, and there is no perfect things in life. Bitcoin no matter how good it is, won't become such a perfect thing for everyone, it will never become a perfect thing in society for everyone.

The young, middle-aged and the elderly will have their specific different strength and weakness so they will have different favorite things to use. Some of the elderly will use bitcoin but not all of them. In Bitcoin forum, we have JetCash, one of Bitcon ogs.

https://coin.dance/stats/age

Of course this makes sense, influencers need attention and it is easier to obtain with promises about price increases. But it costs nothing to those benefitting from Bitcoin to talk also about other aspects.

The question is how long can be benefit from it if it stays bubblish? Won't there be a final crash like in the tulip mania if the "price" is completely detached from the "intrinsic value" because nobody knows anymore what the intrinsic value is?

Best case is that we get the development in this post: an evolution from speculator to a convinced Bitcoin user. But if the bubblish narrative is too dominant, then this becomes more difficult. This is why I advocate for more community involvement and a bit of reflexion.

There's nothing bad saying that Bitcoin can grow in value and "promoting hodling". It's the reasons for that attitude which are key.

Compare: "Bitcoin will grow because Trump will buy millions of it, and thus it only can go up!" and "Bitcoin will grow because it offers qualities no other kind of money offers!".

Phrase 1 is perhaps more catchy, but phrase 2 will result in more convinced and more long-term holders.

The stock market is however a bit easier to grasp. You get a share of a company, which (in most cases) produces useful things, and thus you "earn" your profit by participating in it. Bitcoin's intrinsic value is more difficult to understand. And thus some try to install the narrative that it has no intrinsic value at all, which is wrong.

The problem however is that Bitcoin's intrinsic value as a payment network also depends a bit on how it is used. Speculative use cases are not strengthening the network.

This opinion is a bit pessimistic. If Bitcoin is only "for a special kind of people", then the price might already be overvalued at high five digits. Because that "special kind" in the present are a minority among Bitcoin users/investors.

I don't completely disagree though. Bitcoin does not necessary need to be used by everybody to be successful. There are user groups (people liking to have control over their money, migrants, heavy international internet users, opposition members in dictatorships, some groups of "the unbanked" ...) benefitting more from the intrinsic qualities than others. If among these user groups the Bitcoin adoption was higher, at a cost of lesser speculative usage, then the value could indeed grow.

Good point. I think the community is still on time to correct that tendency though.

I think if these things stop in this case, it will be a big bad name for bitcoin because most of the big company work in bitcoin are the ones who withdraw most of the money in the bank.This is because the bank is doing their job and we are doing our job by holding Bitcoin because everyone want profit and the bank takes money out of it and invests it in their work and when they get profit They keep it where it is taken out. This is why Bitcoin is not a Ponzi for a sane person

Maybe Bitcoin is a ponzi to others, but in our crypto community we know it is not, because there are other people who exploit bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies for evil purposes to victimize people from whom they will get money. This is still happening today.

Because bad people are not disappearing in this era. It is also no different from the fiat currency that we use as money in the country we belong to, because with fiat bad people can do bad things, the same goes for bitcoin.

You described a situation well that I often encountered when I still had the will to discuss BTC with people in real life. In the end, I concluded that at least 90% of people have a completely or at least partially negative opinion about BTC, which stems from what they have read online, or from what various "experts" who come from the world of politics and the banking system have been convincing them for years.

When you try to dissuade someone who is almost completely convinced that BTC is bad, most people react exactly the way you described - "BTC is a ponzi scheme because you're actually persuading me to invest in it so that one day you can sell it at a higher price and make a profit."

My conclusion after all is that people should simply be allowed to believe what they want when it comes to any financial matters. Not so long ago, my government decided for the first time to offer people investments in bonds and treasury bills, and billions of EUR went in that direction - and listening to the comments of people who decided to invest in them, I concluded that they deserve exactly that and nothing more - because they believe the representatives of that same government who say "BTC could drop to 0".

Bitcoin is simply something special for a special kind of people - after 15 years I think that theory has proven to be quite convincing.

It's natural because Ponzi exists everywhere, not only in Bitcoin market. Scammers can use Ponzi through fiat currencies, cash, Bitcoin, altcoins and in many industries, not only in blockchain industry. If people can be scammed by Ponzi, they are vulnerable to this scam type and either in Bitcoin, altcoin markets or in other industries, they will be scammed because they are too much greedy and can not have calm mind when someone brings "too good to be true" offers to them together with promise that it can be done very easily.

However, this fact of Ponzi does not affect Bitcoin, Bitcoin is Bitcoin as it is and it is not a scam cryptocurrency but it can not KYC all developers, users, business to make sure no scammer uses Bitcoin for their jobs.

The problem is these influencers also don’t know what they’re talking about. They have no idea how bitcoin works and so they share information about bitcoin but it’s all false claims and exaggerated statements. This information will be passed down to the next unfortunate person and the cycle will continue like this.
We can drive more people into bitcoin by explaining how it actually works. Yes, it may take time for people to really understand and maybe some won’t even be interested because they do not value the concept of freedom and privacy, but if we keep marketing bitcoin like a get rich quick scheme it will only taint people’s expectations of bitcoin. They need to know how and why it’s structured like that to protect themselves as well before investing.

Yes, it's problematic, but me or you can't really decide what the narrative should be. That's part of the core of decentralization. Only thing we can trust is the code, because code is the law, but even the code too will change, if enough people want it to change.

Intrinsic value in BTC is debatable, and while i technically agree, i see fundamentals of it being more problematic. And imho we are losing many fundamentals when we look for the institutional investors, government oversight and presidents inflating and pumping the price. Because if those same governments suddenly give red flags for bitcoin, it would lead to unprecedented chaos in the markets. Chaos that most of the people trusting those fundamentals wouldn't be prepared for. Bitcoin itself wouldn't change, but attitude towards it would.

Because when it comes to spending money, they are attracted to what will yield them profit; they do not want the technicality of Bitcoin because they are limited to their understanding. I could have adopted Bitcoin early, but it took me a year before I invested in Bitcoin because of the profit sides.
I just learned about the technology behind Bitcoin later on because the information about how Bitcoin works is scarce at those times compared to today.

But for that too investment will have to be made first which a common man cannot do. If you want to work on bitcoin first understand why it is giving profit at the moment but in some case you can take a wrong step that will not lead you to loss.If one doesn't understand Bitcoin then start with small coins first as they will teach you in such a way that your experience will be worth it. If see you can also work on bitcoin work on bitcoin is not that difficult. The difficulty is that Bitcoin doesn't crash at some point, which happens in 4 to 5 days. There are also simple methods for this which can be easily understood. But this is why you should be interested in Bitcoin and focus on smaller coins first. This will make it easier for you to understand Bitcoin and for others to work on it.

That is exactly what OP is trying to say, and he believes it is a negative development because people who don't know anything about Bitcoin are told negative things, and this makes it easy for other people who are against Bitcoin to make their points more solid when they refer to things such as Bitcoin going from $50,000 to $97,000 within a couple of months or so. They will use this and say it is a bubble or a scheme that will soon burst, and people will lose money, and those who were told only about one side of it will easily believe in such things then.

If I were someone who was told by an influencer that Bitcoin is an asset that always goes up, Later I see its price going down and in news or somewhere else it is said that Bitcoin is a scam or a Ponzi scheme or anything, I will start to have some doubts, and most people don't do research on their own and believe whatever they hear or read.

The same qualities are inherent in the traditional stock market, but no one calls securities a scam. Why? Because influential uncles earn money on this and the market has been established for a long time.

Like it or not, society (for the most part) now perceives bitcoin as a speculative instrument, not as a technological innovation.

The hype with the cost only fuels this speculative interest of the public. How to overcome this? Demonstrate a useful practical application of bitcoin, which will attract attention and the focus of attention will shift in another direction.

The feature of bitcoin (high profitability) that is most discussed and attracts more attention, which begins to be closely associated with bitcoin.

And you tell me (everyone reading this post), how many of you learned about bitcoin because of its technological component? I'm sure almost everyone was attracted by the speculative component.

Here's your answer.

Stage 1 of BTC-adoption - fascination with the high profitability of it.
Stage 2 of BTC-adoption - fascination with the technical capabilities of it.

This narrative is more likely to be needed by bitcoin than not.

And people have always want to say. Particularly those who are against bitcoin, they will keep on giving bitcoin negative criticisms and call it a Ponzi scheme. Rather than hearing them out and defend bitcoin, why not just keep it to yourself. After all, people will like bitcoin because they believe its potentials, and they personally experienced it. While those who sees bitcoin as a ponzi, even if you show them how you gained profits from bitcoin, they will still question its potentials, so it’s best to never say nothing at all.

For most people, they don't even care with decentralization.

Actually they're more suspicious with Bitcoin because for them, fiat and banks are working fine. They never had a problem where banks froze their funds, they never lost their money because the banks is still operated etc.

So, what's the point to have Bitcoin if they're fine with banks in the first place? that's why they're only interested with profit.

But the way other people portray it they say something unrealistic situation like they can get easily earn lots of profit if they invest on bitcoin. That's the reason why sentiments like this where bitcoin called as ponzi schemes float up, since not everyone would easily understand about its real usage and some might take those word so bad then think about these people is promising to good to be true for them that's why they call it bitcoin as Ponzi.

If people would just do nice approach towards how they explain bitcoin well and simplify things so that those new people could easily get their point towards what they want to explain about bitcoin, then provably these kind of sentiments will be avoided and newbie people will not think bitcoin as ponzi.

This is about marketing. It's a dirty world.

Believe me, I know of somebody who invested in Bitcoin but the name Satoshi Nakamoto doesn't ring a bell.

This is like selling food. You'd have more sales if you say it's delicious than if you say it's nutritious. With Bitcoin, people would buy when they're told that it's price is going to multiply several fold than if they're told that it's decentralized and offers censorship-resistance.

Whether we like it or not, the Bitcoin market has indeed grown into a bubble thanks to those who don't have an inkling of its fundamental philosophy. Everybody's benefitting from it, anyway.

The truth of the matter is that it isn't just the likes of PlanB that preaches the gospel of Bitcoin's price in USD. Even those who know Bitcoin by heart are preaching the same gospel. How many of us here promote hodl? Now, how is it taking advantage of what Bitcoin really has to offer?

For those who have no knowledge about Bitcoin, Bitcoin may seem like a Ponzi scheme, but for those of us who know about Bitcoin, Bitcoin may not be a Ponzi scheme. Not long ago Bitcoin was around $50000 but now Bitcoin has doubled to around $100000 which means Bitcoin has almost doubled in just a few weeks. Apparently people who don't know about Bitcoin will assume that Bitcoin is a Ponzi scheme at the moment but we know quite a bit about the future of Bitcoin so it is not a Ponzi scheme to us.

Crypto currency in general isn't a get rich scheme, you can't just get rich overnight. Even meme coins that make people rich doesn't just happen rapidly. Before venturing into crypto you must take your time to study it and learn about the risks involved so you can minimize your losses effectively. Newbies that are not patient enough to learn skip this process and try to make it a Ponzi scheme to make quick money, they end up losing and complaining that crypto is hard. Crypto currency is a lifetime of opportunities to those that are skillful and patient. You can't buy Bitcoin and hope it would make you millions overnight, it doesn't work that way.

I don't see any problem in this in general, even if people are being referred to Bitcoin to make investments and gain profit. I know that those making investments should understand that Bitcoin is not a Ponzi scheme and that they are not guaranteed to earn profits in it, but when they make investments, that logically helps Bitcoin grow in the long run because the flow of money increases with it and this proves that there is a higher demand for it and we know what higher demand does to an asset with a limited supply.

Those who make investments in Bitcoin after hearing about it from influencers or other people who say they are going to get guaranteed profits would soon realize that this is only one side of the story and Bitcoin's price doesn't only go up but it goes down as well, but if they do some digging, they would realize that there are bear markets and bull markets and if they do things wisely, they can still benefit from it.

The main thing is to bring more attention to it, and this serves the purpose, I believe.