Do you want me to nod with you, or to reject your arguments?
1. There is. For understanding that you need to put together data from different sources.
First, long-term planned distribution:
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Controlled_supplySecond, a formula that makes sure, a huge pot of coins comes free to their owners:
https://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-mining-difficulty-record-20-trillion-january-20212. Except there is. the vast majority of BTCs are exchanged for another worthless token, USDT, BTC has very little utility as a currency. The minority that comes in with their real money is very similar to recruits of a pyramid scheme.
3. This forum is full of promises. 90+ % of posts are made of promises. HODL, and you´ll do fine. LN will solve the problems. These are ALL PROMISES. Hell, BTC´s "deflatory" design is a promise, nothing else. That is very closely linked with a rightful expectation for profit in the future.
BTC is not a pure pyramid, it´s a more complicated fraudulent scheme.
With more and more influential people and companies getting involved with Bitcoin there's been a lot of talks about the crypto world among regular people, to whom Bitcoin is still something new and unknown.
As you might expect, many of these people believe that Bitcoin and all other cryptocurrencies will not benefit the economy, but rather only make it worse, and many are convinced that Bitcoin is yet another pyramid. And what upsets me the most is that among these people are economists, financial advisors, they should know better, than that...
So how do I prove them wrong?
Though I'm not a professional economist, still I've come up with some arguments as to why Bitcoin ISN'T a financial pyramid:
1. There's no single beneficiary
In financial pyramids, there's always someone, an organization, or a group of people who benefit from peoples' investments. Who benefits from Bitcoin? Anyone can become that person if he/she invests enough money, there's no one, who controls it.
However, a friend of mine argued that there are people, who benefit: electric companies from large energy consumption due to mining and the companies that develop and sell the miners.
But that's just crazy, to believe in that we'd have to assume that they're all in collusion.
2. There's no need for new recruitment
That's probably my favorite. The main reason why financial pyramids survive is that they constantly recruit new customers. Without that - the pyramid falls.
But there's absolutely no need to recruit new people for Bitcoin to function, am I right? Without new users, there'll be just redistribution of what there is among the current users, txns will still be going and the miners will have work to do. So there's no required amount of users for Bitcoin to function like there is in the pyramid. I see no potential flaws here.
3. There are no promises
In financial pyramids, it is common that an organization lures people in by promising that they can easily "turn $100 into $1000", for instance. There's no such thing with Bitcoin. Yes, there's a potential for it to grow, you can make money out of it, but there's also a potential for it to drop, everyone invests knowing this can happen and sometimes it does happen, we go in here being aware of the risks.
That's about it.
Also, one thing that people keep telling me and get me cornered with is that there's no actual value behind Bitcoin. And that the economy can't function like that. Making Bitcoin only requires resources (e.g. energy, machines), but Bitcoin doesn't give anything in return. They say that behind the fiat there's an actual value, which is why we can avoid inflation: precious metals, country resources, plus it is fixed to the GDP, which is why the economy can be stabilized.
Without that - fiat is just paper. And while Bitcoin has nothing like that fixed to its price - it is also nothing.
They say you can't just "create" money out of nowhere. The only way Bitcoin can function as a part of the economical system - is if we replace the fiat with it. What can you say about that? Sounds reasonable, but I'm not a specialist. Is that really true?
Don't hesitate to point out if I'm wrong somewhere, it'll help a lot. Also, it would be very helpful if some of you could come up with more arguments, proving that Bitcoin isn't a financial pyramid.
I know it isn't and I also want other people to know that it isn't, and for that, I need as many arguments as possible.