I think crypto is dumb as hell but by this logic, how are any speculative assets not Ponzi schemes then? I’d argue that by definition, it’s not a ponzi. How could it be? What entity is controlling and organizing the flow of money in such a way that investors are repaid FIFO? Not only that but there’s zero guarantee based on position in line that you’ll make any amount of money relative to that position — a guarantee you’d likely have in most Ponzi schemes.
Idk. There are a lot of reasons to hate blockchains and bitcoin but trying to label it as something is fundamentally is not seems counterproductive and disingenuous.
Yep. While I’m also no fan of cryptocurrencies, calling them Ponzis is just silly. People love repeating these slogans without actually understanding what they mean
Less ponzi and more hot potato. Right now, the potato is piping hot, so a lot of people are pumping up because HOLY SHIT 71k DOLLARS!!! YOU SHOUD BUY NAO BECAUSE IT’S ONLY GOIN UUUUUUPPPPPP
A crash is inevitable, a bunch of whales are just biding their time and nobody knows the next floor price
You’ve just described the stock market and capitalism in general. Ironically a digital curency is one of the few places where unlimited growth is actually possible. Not that BTC is a good idea of course.
Considering our cognitive defenses against admitting our errors, I’ll just go ahead and assume that the bars on the right are much much larger in reality.
Hmm. It kind of resembles a ‘Ponzi-scheme’, where the only thing keeping it together is the gamblers frantically trying to save their bets by lying about their gains.
Imagine how short this Libertarian farce would’ve been if those with running bets didn’t gain by lying to new-comers and the world. It’s even worse than the Elon/Tesla cult !
Cryptocurrency is the only thing to save you from the very specific apocalypse in which society crumbles but somehow the internet and the electrical grid keeps working.
I’m trying to envision the panic as crypto bros can’t get into their online wallets.
I’m going to stick with my strategy of growing barley and running a still. Pretty sure I’ll have something men will give me their firstborn to obtain. Then I’ll use my army of drunken, mutated postwar babies to take over the tampon factories, and gain the support of the other half of humanity.
Corn is an absolute b*stard to mash compared to malted barley.
Id stick with the barley. But you’ll need time for that to grow and harvesting without technology would be a lot of work, so actually stockpile a few tonnes of sugar so you can make neutral spirit for gin and Molotov cocktails in the meantime
You still need the network to process transactions; if the internet is down then your local wallet is unspendable unless you create a local side chain with your own nodes and get everyone who wants to transact with you on board.
Then the apocalypse must continue because you’d never be able to reattach to the main chain
Whats your point? If you are a teenager and your parents gave you their wedding rings as you are off to become a refugee, versus getting given a note with a string of letters and numbers on it, whats more likely to get stolen in a refugee camp?
Like if you think you are dunking on crypto bros and thats what you want to be doing, you should make sure you are actually dunking on them. There is plenty to pick on, plenty of stupidity and criticism to be made fun of around crypto like monkey pictures and the environmental impact, but brah, this ain’t it.
Put yourself in this situation. You are in Gaza. Your entire family is getting bombed. You’ve been putting whatever meager savings you have into crypto for years. You give your kids a note that has the key’s they’ll need to get into the wallets, and have them pin it inside their jackets, or better yet make them memorize it. Maybe you as a parent die, but your kids make it out. Someday, maybe they get to some where more peaceful, and when they get there, they can access what you were able to put aside for them.
In that way, crypto actually represents an excellent way of dealing with many of the issues one might expect to encounter in a war torn area.
No, you can’t. This is literally the entire premise of crypto.
Firstly you can’t just open a bank account in another country if you come from a place like Palestine. It’s not that simple, or even potentially legal. And a bank isn’t going to break the law on your behalf.
If a bank blows up because another country blows the shit of of yours, there is jack shit you can do. Or if the currency becomes worthless or ceases to exist because your country ceases to exist. Or the government just says “we need to take the money from the banks to find the war efforts, well pay you back when we’re done”.
It’s an interesting example of a very, kind of surprising niche use case where a distributed trust less ledger is actually a better solution.
Sure, you might lose connection for a while, but its not like your bitcoin goes away because wherever you are lost electricity. If you make it out alive, your coins are still yours when you can get back on the internet.
Funny sentiment here. People seem really dedicated to hating on something for all the wrong reasons.
You do know that value is a subjective form of perception right? Value is created because of a belief in a thing. Its all pure speculation.
I know its fun to punch down on crypto but its not like literally all currencies and modern stores of value that aren’t actual physical good (and even some of them) suffer from the exact some issue.
Are actually citing the prolewiki unironically? And even then, those sources and thinkers agree with what I just said.
Value is based on based on perception. Its a made up human thing. And made up human things can be useful, just like dollars or stocks and bonds or dividends, or property deeds, or an exchange rate between precious metals and various goods and services.
Value is all made up and purely subjective. And thats fine. Made up fictional things can still have utility.
Sure. If you perceive crypto as worthless, don’t buy it. Poof! Its value is gone. I don’t hold crypto nor do I have any use for it. I would guess that similarly to you, it has no value to me either.
But someone else out there has a different perception of things than us. They do see it as valuable. And they are willing to pay, whatever it is that they are willing to pay to get access to it. And poof! It has value.
Dude, please stop spreading misleading information about value creation, made up value definitions and hiddenly legitimate crypto claiming out of thin air that people holding it were not scammed/manipulated/fooled, but acquire crypto because of some “value” they see in it
Go read some Marx, some Smith, fucking hell go read fucking Kropotkin.
They all disagree on what value is and how to identify it in many respects but one: that value is based on perception. Hell for Marx, the idea that value is relative to perception is fundamental to their theory of capitol and the exploitation of surplus labor.
Value its self is made up out of thin air, and is always based on perception. Its just a matter of where you place the boundaries and lens for developing that perception. Is it society which decides where value exists or the individual? You want to perceive crypto as a scam/ pyramid scheme, and to be of little to no, or even god-forbid negative value! That’s fine, and your liberty to do so, and not an unreasonable stance. And its a good thing for you to be able to have that worldview.But no one else is obligated to take that stance. If they choose to place value in crypto, or collectible trading cards, or furbies, or porcelain Hummel dolls, or paying for to look at someones feet while wearing nylon panty hose, that’s their liberty to do so.
If value exists where can I find it? Can I go to the value tree and pick some value? Can I take some of that value and staple it to some doggy coin or whatever and does it now take on that value? How value does a loaf of bread have to your or I? What about to a family in Gaza right now? What about to a breadmaker? How about their customer? Or a soup kitchen that received that bread as a donation?
If you lost money on crypto, I’m sorry. But I also don’t feel that bad for you. The signs were there and people have been screaming about them for years.
I cannot agree, we should try to help people to avoid ponzi. It is hard for people to resist marketing campaigns and opinion leaders trying to involve more people into ponzis
Personally, I’d say Bitcoin is a negative-sum game.
In order for one person to win, thousands of people have to lose. If that was all it was, Bitcoin would be merely a zero-sum game. However, Bitcoin mining also uses up valuable resources like electricity and processing power, so there’s still a loss.
Calling Bitcoin a Ponzi scheme isn’t wrong, though.
Right, their comment basically is “A Ponzi scheme is when a company does it, but Bitcoin isn’t a company, so when Bitcoin does it it isn’t a Ponzi scheme!”
He was probably thinking of pension. Pensions do function in a same way ponzi scheme does, it relies on a new generation to bring in enough to pay out for the previous generation.
The problem in this is that when the population keeps getting older (less babies born), the younger gens need to pay more and more to keep up with the older gen. So basically if you decided to have only a 1 child instead of 4, you’d technically make it harder for your kid to provide pension payouts for you. This is why people argue against it.
I personally think pensions (along with most gov welfare) should just be replaced with UBI to vastly simplify the processes at very least, even if it still has the same problem with aging population
No, public pensions don't function like a ponzi scheme. There are actual pension funds that are actively invested and these profits do indeed help cover current and future pension payments. Yes, the government uses current pension payments to pay out receivers. But that's because it would be stupid to take out part of the pension fund, pay the people, and then put in the exact same amount from new payments. Instead you keep a balance sheet of how much was paid in and how much was paid out and the difference is added or deducted from the pension fund.
Yes, there are a few mismanged public pension funds. But they aren't nearly as common as people believe. And even in mismanaged pension funds the situation is still different from a ponzi scheme. Mismanaged pension funds use part of the deparment budget to cover the difference. This comes at the cost of cutting programs or downsizing in other ways. The more mismanaged the fund, the higher the percentage of the budget goes towards it. But that's another reason why they aren't lik a ponzi scheme, because there are different methods of funding them than just the payments of "new members joining".
Most mismanaged pension funds are from the private sector, not from the government. And there most aren't a ponzi scheme either and instead some other form of fraud or just plain old theft.
I still agree with an UBI being a better alternative.
I love crypto and all things blockchain, but I make it a rule not to hold tether for any period of time. Sometimes you need to in order to do a swap, but I get rid of that shit quick.
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