A year or so ago, I remember bitcoin being above $1000, the Guardian ran many positive stories. It seemed every day bitcoin had a positive spin - bitcoin million dollar thumbdrive found, bitcoin beer sold, bitcoin hoarded by Chinese. I mentioned the obvious fact - that bitcoin was a (pointlessly) elaborate Ponzi scheme, whose obfuscations and complexities only served to mask the extremely obvious truth - the vast majority of bitcoin is valued 1 cent or lower, and the only job of the founders (Ponzi leaders) is to in entice new users (dumb money) into the bottom of the Ponzi pyramid. It does't matter at what point the dumb money came in - $1 or $1000, to the tip of the pyramid it's pure profit, even if they manage to liquidate only a few bitcoin to actual money (a difficult task even in the most stable periods) they would reap pure profit and the dumb money would instantly (I mean instantly) become permanent bagholders (once a ponzi begins unraveling, the momentum is always down).
When I pointed out the simple truth (truth is always simple, unlike fraudulent bitcoin) of the ponzi scheme, I was shouted down by waves of scheming pump boilers. They all came out of the woodwork at once. "You don't understand X" "The protocol means Y" "Satoshi and Ayn Rand told me Z" on and on and on. Wow, I was shocked, I'd never seen such coordinated efforts to boil up a price. I only hope that those guys were near the original buy in, otherwise they became suicidally trapped bagholders. $300? $500? $1200? Who knows the depth of their ruination.
Moral of the story - to the founders, congratulations, you defrauded, and continue to defraud, tens of thousands of people who I'm sure thought they were very clever and ahead of the game (usually the dumbest people in the room). And to the bagholders - I won't say it's not too late, because at this point liquidating any bitcoin volume in any meaningful significance will lock up the remaining "market" and lead to an instant crash or more likely simply the termination of "market" function in totality. But you can resolve today to put your savings in actual assets valued in actual money, money backed by hundreds of trillions of physical assets, enforcement agencies, and transparent, fraud resisting systems that are continuously improved day by day. You've been victimized, but you can learn from your mistakes and make sure other friends and family are not defrauded by cyber criminals and ponzi pumpers. Cheers!
