Topic: Is Bitcoin a Pyramid or Ponzi scheme & what are the ramifications? - page 5. (Read 10949 times)

You are agains't drug use? Do you know a place on earth where every person is "clean"? Drugs have always been and always will be. And as i read most of your threads and posts i thought that people with an higher iq are able to see the konnex why the US (and other cons) called a war on drugs. If drugs would be decriminalised worldwide the drugcartels (cia,etc) would lose a big amount of their income. And if that money would not be spent on prohibition, lawenforcment, jails (which is getting quite a profitable branch in europe) but on education we would have a lot less problems.
And Leukemia, probably as a side-effect of the drug use? Mkay.. Which drug exactly?

Most of the people come to the bitcoin world need to first understand why fiat money is the biggest ponzi scheme, and then they will have a better understanding why bitcoin appreciate so fast

It is not bitcoin who is appreciating, it is the fiat money whose value is dropping dramatically. At first people would accept the fact that the value of their goods measured by fiat money will also drop against bitcoin, but later they will realize that it is only fiat money's value dropping, so they will raise the fiat money price of their goods/services eventually

I wouldn't invest in Bitcoin is this illegal use was the dominant justification.

If drugs become mainstream, I will move away from society. That is once reason I moved away from the USA and stay away from Thailand (even though they have strict drug laws, they seem to attract too many foreigners who use them).

I understand and support individual freedom, and maybe drugs are going to become extremely widespread now with Bitcoin, and so maybe that is a wise investment.

However, I am hoping society will continue to fight drugs harshly as they do here in Asia for the most part with life and death sentences.

So I guess I will choose to remain ignorant of such a market, and assume it will remain insignificant.

Note I am not in favor of forcing all countries to be harsh on drugs. I have a friend from NL and he was doing drugs recreationally all his life. Unfortunately now he is dying of Leukemia, probably as a side-effect of the drug use. Well I guess he enjoyed his life. We all have to die someday.

Please stop quoting peoples with yellow buttons. It makes the ignore feature useless.

Cannabis is illegal in my country, so the price is high if you wanna buy it and you will get a jail ( probably ), in Holland it's legal, you can trade it, buy in coffee shops, smoke in the street. Apply that to bitcoin, only the larger part is sued for that "illegal" stuff and the rest for normal trade. Price is dictated by many things, in this case one of those things is the need to buy something you can't in relative security.

I cannot reply in the other thread for some reason, but here's my take.

I think Bitcoin shares characteristics of many things discussed as follows:

Ponzi -20% (there are no central divs/payouts, but the earlier investors get rich from new investors money)
Pyramid - 20% (nothing is being sold, but it does require ever greater new entrants to keep price momentum)
Greater Fool - 10% (as above needs new investors willing to pay ever higher prices on no intrinisc value)
Facebook - 50% (buy it now because it will be big and then it'll somehow be worth what we've paid for it and more)

- I bought BTC and sold them and made a profit. I am like 99% of BTC buyers and have no interest in BTC for transactions. It's simply a means to make a short-term profit.

The reality is that now the vast majority of BTC buyers are like me and of the recent new buyers almost all of them are (or are there seriously people who believe the chinese are buying BTC to spend them).

I have been making the same point about lack of real transactions for a long time and no-one ever has an answer. As has been detailed it simply doesn't work for most normal transactions (too slow/too volatile in price/lack of recourse for buyer) as follows in comparisons:

vs cash/cards in person - too slow, I can pass someone banknotes in a shop and we are done in 5 seconds, I cannot wait 10mins to 2 hours for the BTC to pass

vs credit cards on-line - there is no price-saving and I lose the right to protection I have with cards and on-line is where I need protection most

vs Western Union etc for money transfer - I might be able to save money on fees, but I don't know what the currency will be valued at when it arrives

I keep asking for stats on real transaction on Bitcoins (ie buying legal goods/services) and guess what where aren't any and no-one wants to dig too deep because the truth is painful.

Also look at this forum, this forum is the pinnacle of Bitcoin users, the best educated and almost every thread is about mining and price speculation.

So then we agree that the anonymity in Bitcoin is not mainstream, so it has nothing to do with the price valuation. I don't think investors could justify such huge projections of currency value if only illegal markets are to be the norm.

VPNs, new email address that is used only for bitcoins, you can make fake documents ( PS ) and use them to create accounts and send them if you are asked for them, open bank account on a fake document and so on...If you have nothing to hide, as in, you trade it just for sole purpose to make money, then that doesn't concern you, but if you are selling drugs, guns, sex and so on, then well, you will probably be smart enough not to give away your real identity.

In most cases the NSA and the "Club" do know this. They can get it from your ISP and IP address or by correlating emails, spends with credit card from same IP, etc, etc, etc.

You have to be both expert and lucky for that not to be increasingly the case.

Well you can trace it to some degree to a point of origin ( address ), but you don't know who is the owner of that address, as in name, DoB, and so on...

That is already known to false in most cases.

Bitcoin is an experiment that is working atm, generating money and value, but that value is determined only by the usage and that as far as we know, bitcoins are untraceable, if that changes it will break down like any Ponzi scheme or Pyramid....

I am a programmer. Many geeks (often the most productive ones) are not good at English prose delivery. We speak Klingon to the computer daily.

People are stupid but getting burned tends to make them pay attention. We shall see.

I am out for the night have to work tomorrow.
I think you make interesting points (delivery could use some work however).

As the saying goes you catch more flies with honey then vineger. I think you would find more converts if you were a wee bit less confrontational in your post.

I enjoyed the conversation. Thanks for the interesting read.

People won't see it as fiat. It will be of course sold to them with propaganda just like Bitcoin was sold by Max Keiser et al to goldbugs as the better gold.

People are myopic and gullible (i.e. a form of "stupid" or preoccupied), don't forget that.

Fork won't stop my attack.

Sorry you are naive on all this, that is why you aren't worried as you should be.

CFR = Council on Foreign Relations a creation of the establishment akin to Rockefeller and his Trilateral Commission.

Note due to compartmentalization not every person (e.g. Angelina Jolie) in the CFR sees themself as a gatekeeper. They see themselves as part of a greater good.

CFR?

Thanks I have not had a chance to read either of them I will check them out when I have time.

I think you are underestimating the distrust that the general population will have of fiat currency after having so recently been burned by a collapse.

I don't have time to read your transaction attack thread tonight but even if such a thing happened people would simple leave bitcoin for an altcoin that was more robust. Once burned by a fiat crisis I don't think the population will ever trust fiat especially with a multitude of non fiat alternatives to choose from that are no doubt in the works.

My grandparents lived through the great depression. It changed them. Their entire lives they were crazy savers and never wasted anything.

A fiat crisis will likewise change our generation. We will become crazy fiat haters. This is why I don't think a centralized fiat system will succeed.

Here is the article from Mauldin on bitcoin from 5/2013. Its an interesting read (whenever you have time not too relevant to this conversation) I felt it was fair. Did not really pump bitcoin much. In fact their take was that government would probably try to outlaw it. Looks like they were wrong on that one at least so far.
http://www.mauldineconomics.com/ttmygh/bit-happens

It will be global coordination of the G20 that create the new electronic currency. See my upthread links from Armstrong.

They can just morph Bitcoin. See my Transactions Withholding Attack.

Btw, I follow Mauldin and many others. Michael Pettis and Martin Armstrong are two you should read also (Mauldin knows them of course)

Pettis is the China expert. He has a recent blog about Japan's future.

Armstrong ran the worlds largest hedge fund at $3 trillion

http://mpettis.com/

http://armstrongeconomics.com/armstrong_economics_blog/

I agree with you, the entire system will come crashing down.

And that is precisely how they will get a global electronic money fiat.

Hungry billions agree to accept a solution. The destroyed nation-states won't be able to offer a solution.

The only solution will be a global debt restructuring and new currency regime.

This is crystal clear, and Mauldin knows this. He is just a gatekeeper for the central banks as is Pettis. They both belong to the CFR.

You should wonder why Mauldin is pitching this Bitcoin mania to you. He like Max Keiser are working with the system. Only Armstrong tells the truth about Bitcoin's future.

Armstrong is the true outsider (I think?).

Sure you are. If you had at said you took a couple of word classes i might have actually believed you.

Some governments are certain to try and issue fiat cryptocurrencies but I doubt these have much chance of success.

One writer who's work I highly recommend is John Mauldin
http://www.mauldineconomics.com/about-us/john-mauldin/

He has a free newsletter that is very informative. I first learned about bitcoin from this newsletter.
He lays out a very convincing case that we are in for a world of hurt in the near future.

Personally I think it will start in Japan. Before too long Japan with their current trajectory is going to be in a situation where it becomes obvious to everyone that that the only way they will ever pay off their crazy high government debt is to keep printing money.

Once it becomes obvious to all that Japan has not choice but to print and keep printing (they will choose this over default) we are in for some nasty inflation. Not just in Japan but in all the countries playing around with QE (which is pretty much everyone).

By the time the show is over there will be little to no faith in fiat as a store of value in my opinion. If things play out this way any centralized government crypto is destined to be a huge flop.

My opinion is watch the market cap. As long as it it less than a stock, we shouldn't be near saturation. I figure 2014 or 2015 is the top based on current doubling rate. Maybe 2016 at most.

I am very worried about the government fiat, because neither the geeks nor the libertarians can really see what is going on here. They are so complacent.

My group is the only one on the planet who is taking action as far as know.

There are others designing altcoins, but they have a different focus.

And I know a lot of people and receive a lot of information flowing to me.

Hope I am wrong.