i already answered
What makes you think Bitshares is a scam? They clearly have a nice looking project. Arguably better than BTC technically depending on how you see it imo.
you can get some bitshares and play with yourself or other 10 people. adoption, adoption, chance for bitshares adoption = 0.00000%
That doesn't make it a scam.
It sort of does in the sense that you are playing greater fool where someone is inevitably left holding the bag if there isn't actual adoption at the end of the story.
I don't take as hard a line on it as benthach does, and I think some alt projects are actually trying to achieve that adoption, but I also think there is a huge portion of this scene that is effectively a massively multiplayer online gambling game where whoever sells last (or not at all) loses.
So Bitcoin could be called the same thing if there weren't enough users?
Nice avatar btw.
It could, somewhat. I view it as less so because when Bitcoin was launched there was no precedent that it would ever have any monetary value at all. There were no markets to trade on. The concept of a crypto investor didn't even exist. Today (and especially in 2013-2014) it is much, much easier to just be an opportunist.
True true. But do you honestly think Buterin started Ethereum with a malicious plan to scam people out of their money from the beginning?
Words like "malicious" and "scam" are really subjective. I do think he started it with the intent to take a lot of investors money and put it in his and his friends' pocket, while not really making a solemn commitment to be a good custodian of the investors' money and deliver what was promised (and not treat the money as his personal playground to spend on and work on whatever the hell he felt like). And in the end that is exactly how it has worked out.
I don't think he intended to just take the money and run, delivering nothing at all. That's also consistent with how it worked out.
So, scam, or not scam. Malicious or not malicious. Everyone can decide individually how to characterize it.
So he scammed people without making it look like an outright scam. What is the state of the project btw?
Edit: Don't answer that. I'll make a new thread asking how the frontier release is, and how it was received. Or I'll just do my own research and go through their forum if I'm not lazy. Anyway, nice talk. You have opened my eyes to the possibility that there could be a new category of scumbag in crypto. And it could be the lowest of the low at that.
Thanks.
The state of the project is pretty well covered in the OP on this thread (and linked blog post).
I think a lot of the blame for the mess that it turned into lies with the investors who basically did a "Shut up and take my money". There was very little scrutiny of the "plan". Nobody seemed to care that there was no real governance, little in the way of strong, deep, experienced, or accountable management to go along with the $20 million budget or whatever they got.
When you give matches to toddlers to play with, don't act all surprised when the house burns down. (This wasn't intended as a dig at Vitalik's age either, although reading it that way is not terrible.)