Ponzi Schemes simply do not survive crashes well...
i dont think you even know what a ponzi scheme is
ponzi's have 3 elements to it
1. your not buying ponzi shares/assets on some open market. your paying a scammer and he keeps the money. he controls all the shares.
you cant mine new ponzi shares or buy them from someone else or obtain them from selling goods or services.
2. when you want to sell your shares you have to request money from the scammer, you cant just sell your shares to other people. or buy things with it or exchange it for other things away from the scammer.
3. the scammer controls how many shares to offer out or to take back, usually there is no limit on how many can go out, but there is a limit on how many can come back in.. so that he can control how much money leaves his pocket. , basically he uses peters money coming in to pay pauls money going out. where he is only letting paul go out with a smaller amount so that the scammer can keep a bit of peters money
...
bitcoin is nothing like that.
bitcoin is not a pyramid either where a top central person sets up a system that requires more population to join where a percentage of all transfers go back up to the top creator..
however fiat is a pyramid. every payment you make gets taxed which goes to the national treasurer that created fiat
the only way it survives is to try getting more population to use it. or get a limited population to get more to be taxed more by it. . the dollar has for as long as anyone remembers been trying to push more countries to accept dollar as a base currency they need to use. they try to find new ways to tax every transaction. everything from income, asset swaps, sales tax, business sales profits,
the other part is the way they create and distribute new money is flawed in fiat. they dont just hand it out to people that earned it. instead they loan new money out asking the recipient to pay it back to them with a little extra interest on top.
..
bitcoin again is nothing like that their is no central reserve/treasury in bitcoin. their is no down stream game where those above it get % of those below it(no royalty/tax/passive income/loan interest returns) for those above the current holder
..
bitcoin is not a ponzi or a pyramid. bitcoin is an open currency anyone can use, where there are many ways to get in and out freely. many ways to earn it and many ways to spend/sell it. there is no tax that goes to a central treasury where every payment puts money into upstream managers.
there are many ways to get bitcoin. you can sell merchandise for bitcoin. (in my own town i know of 5 people doing just that. and this town is not even one you hear about in media or news events and its not a tourist spot.)
you can mine it.
you can buy it from random people face to face or via exchanges (centralised or decentralised)
you can earn it, via a job or some software games that do "play to earn", heck even some people rent out things in exchange for bitcoin. even things like renting out their forum avatar or footnote space.
people offer services for bitcoin. consultations, advise, technical assistance, physical world repair, manual labour work..
the thing that differentiates bitcoin from fiat is that there is no central reserve keeping 10%+ of every payment(tax treasury)
..
as for your cries in what you describe as "crash".. thats saying you are invested at a price higher then the market "crash" events.. someone wanting to invest(future tense) would be happy and excited to see low prices. its discount. heck even though im already highly invested. but i also see the benefit of discount events. i dont cry about it. .. but thats because i dont see myself as at a loss.
these events i call dips, corrections, discount and finding the new bottom. are opportunities, even for someone already invested. the new bottom of each halving cycle is more than the last. meaning if you can buy at the new bottom. and hold for the next cycle you will not lose.
the prospective to have is not to think of the ATH as the 'value' a price should stay at where by any dip 'crash' is seen as a loss.. but instead, look at the bottoms as the 'value' and if the price comes back down from a temporary overpriced premium. take the opportunity before the next deflationary rise cycle
i already had enough hoard to see me good for rest of my life. but even recently when the market tipped below $30k i bought more. and when it tipped below $20k i bought even more. these discounted prices in comparison to the 2020-2022 era average is a good time to buy, so i did. no regrets, no cries, even when the price i paid this year is higher than the hoard i got from many years ago.