Topic: Re: [FAQ] Is BitCoin a Ponzi or pyramid scheme? (Newbie-Friendly) - page 4. (Read 5834 times)

Who are pushing bitcoin towards the dangerous Ponzi scheme? Those who

• hoard bitcoins and sell bitcoins in the exchane in volume
• and don't BUY anything with bitcoins,
• and they advocate that bitcoin is the future currency.

Who are friends of bitcoin that consolidate the value of bitcoin as currency? Happy and reasonable shoppers who BUY things with their bitcoins.

The risks of becoming a big ponzi scheme do exist if most bitcoins are bought and sold on the market.

No, you didn't figure anything out.

An increasing exchange rate and early adopters profiting does not make a ponzi scheme. By your definition anything that went up in value would be a ponzi scheme. Google stock is a ponzi scheme. Gold is a ponzi scheme. Land is a ponzi scheme. Oil is a ponzi scheme.

So for your world to be without ponzi schemes, nothing could ever change value. That sounds like prison because someone is going to have to enforce it. The fact is things change. People change. What they value changes. The free market is all about price discovery. Bitcoin doesn't only go up, it goes down as well. Anyone who purchased any Bitcoins at any point from the very start has taken the risk of losing value. That is not a scheme, the risk is, and always will be, there for everyone.

The ponzi operator takes no financial risk (beyond punishment if caught obviously)!

Also, I have no idea what you are going on about with the "divided more than a million times" idea. You can divide it as much as you want, everyone still holds the same percentage of the total. It makes no difference what-so-ever as far as scarcity is concerned. Only how you perceive it. There are either 21 million Bitcoins or 2.1 quadrillion satoshis, I still have the same amount in my wallet and can affect the market equally in either scenario.

Someone came into my home and took my TV. They are a thief! (I forgot to mention that I placed an AD in the local paper offering my TV for sale and then accepted their money in exchange for it.)

I figured everything out when I took a walk this afternoon.

From mathematical point of view, they are the same. The interest can be just the price increase itself and people might reinvest the interest into BTC. If the BTC price increased and you sell part of them, it is equal to collecting interest. As long as there is capital flow into the investment target continuously, be it a concept or a virtual thing or a real thing, the effect is the same

I figured everything out when I took a walk this afternoon.

From mathematical point of view, they are the same. The interest can be just the price increase itself and people might reinvest the interest into BTC. If the BTC price increased and you sell part of them, it is equal to collecting interest. As long as there is capital flow into the investment target continuously, be it a concept or a virtual thing or a real thing, the effect is the same

Dude, you are talking about bubbles, not Ponzi schemes

Holliday just put up an excellent post laying out Ponzi schemes, pyramides schemes etc. a few posts back:  read it !

No it absolutely can't! Interest rate is a tool central banks use to give the currency a value because the potential total moneysupply is infinite, and thus intrinsic future value of a USD is ±0. Now that can be considered a ponzi, because the people who get to spend/borrow the new money FIRST get most for their buck while the last people in the business-cycle pay inflated prices. (last pay for the first)

But in bitcoin there is no interest rate. Because bitcoins are in themself attractive due to a fixed, predictible supply similar to gold, nobody gets any benefit of spending/borrowing the money first or last.

Hoarding, is not an investment, its a speculation. And it can lead to losses.

I figured everything out when I took a walk this afternoon.

When new participants flood their dollars in Bitcoin exchange, the price of bitcoin goes up, hoarders who spread the hypes dump their coins and make their profit, in a colletive and indirect way. You can't see the individual who snaped away your money as a newbie. This is nature of bitcoin exchange as a tool of ponzi scheme. The hypers work in a team that no one exposes his face as a schemer. Is this a ponzi scheme? simple and clear yes, a subtle hidden and intricate one.

Who rescues bitcoin? The feature that a bitcoin can be divided more than a million times which eliminates scarcity. That's why a ponzi scheme works fine with other designated commodity but doesn't work with bitcoin. Hypers and schemers are doomed because they cannot drive the market in the same way as they do with other investment to beat the average return on investment.

So, bubbles exist everywhere, a ponzi scheme has no chance to work with bitcoin if the owners of 51% of the coins are basically lucid.

IMO, everything valueable in the world will always develope into a ponzi like scheme, but I call it crowd behavior

Take housing for example, as soon as the stable and continuously rising price has fall into the eyes of the mass, more and more capital will flow into the houses, and this process will eventually strengthen itself and suck in more and more capital, but at certain point of time, the available capital will be limited by the banks, sooner or later it will hit a brake and the fall will also strengthen itself

It's like a wave, it is a part of the nature

The profitability of hoarding bitcoins can be compared to interest rate...

How does him/her hoarding bitcoins and trying to play up the price damage the usefulness of them? If bitcoins aren't useful as money then they will fail regardless. Bitcoin is an experiment , let as many people experiment with it in as many different ways as possible.

No...

If he has sold 50K bitcoins he has used those coins to buy USD, So it is impossible to both sell coins and not buy anything

People who save their coins mean someone else can get a good price for selling coins
People who sell their coins mean someone else can get a good price for buying coins
People who buy things other than USD with their coins mean someone else has a chance to save, sell or buy things with

all types are good

i do know what is speculation and what is a ponzi scheme and what is pyramid scheme.

Let's say, a miner has 100 k bitcoins, he sells 50 k for profit, he never buys anything with bitcoin, that's not a problem, it's his freedom perfectly. But if he tells people everywhere that bitcoin is the currency of the future, he's a disgusting liar and ponzi scammer. Does that sound reasonable? and if a substantial percentage of bitcoiners are this type of person, bitcoin is doomed and held victim of a ponzi scheme.

i do know what is speculation and what is a ponzi scheme and what is pyramid scheme.

Let's say, a miner has 100 k bitcoins, he sells 50 k for profit, he never buys anything with bitcoin, that's not a problem, it's his freedom perfectly. But if he tells people everywhere that bitcoin is the currency of the future, he's a disgusting liar and ponzi scammer. Does that sound reasonable? and if a substantial percentage of bitcoiners are this type of person, bitcoin is doomed and held victim of a ponzi scheme.

... what?
if they sold bitcoins then they bought USD... so no one could meet both criteria

and... how is it criminal?

and... do you know what a ponzi is?

who are you anyway? this is a weird thread.