BTC : Where is the bottom?

Speedster said:
Or neither. Stating this simply indicates a complete lack of understanding as to what constitutes a Ponzi.
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I don't understand it either. It's like if someone used a car to scam people or something and people started calling cars a ponzi. Would make zero sense.
 
“a form of fraud in which belief in the success of a non-existent enterprise is fostered by the payment of quick returns to the first investors from money invested by later investors.”

Is this definition incorrect?
 
Nike7 said:
“a form of fraud in which belief in the success of a non-existent enterprise is fostered by the payment of quick returns to the first investors from money invested by later investors.”

Is this definition incorrect?
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I have to concede and agree. This sounds just like the dollar actually.
 
Nike7 said:
“a form of fraud in which belief in the success of a non-existent enterprise is fostered by the payment of quick returns to the first investors from money invested by later investors.”

Is this definition incorrect?
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We can go with that. Which quick returns are made/accrued to holders of fiat?

I've held fiat all my life and never once been promised/allocated any returns from doing so, not to mention quick returns.
 
saor said:
I don't understand it either. It's like if someone used a car to scam people or something and people started calling cars a ponzi. Would make zero sense.
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Oh I see what you mean. I disagree, Bitcoin is too abstract and thus it is whatever people are using it for. A car is a silly analogy because it has attributes that lock in its identity as something other than a ponzi token, so if similar were to happen with cars you’d say that the car market is in a bubble.

@Speedster you’re right in that calling fiat a Ponzi scheme I can only say it metaphorically , based on the economics. It’s easier to get away with calling Bitcoin a ponzi.
 
Nike7 said:
Oh I see what you mean. I disagree, Bitcoin is too abstract and thus it is whatever people are using it for. A car is a silly analogy because it has attributes that lock in its identity as something other than a ponzi token, so if similar were to happen with cars you’d say that the car market is in a bubble.

@Speedster you’re right in that calling fiat a Ponzi scheme I can only say it metaphorically , based on the economics. It’s easier to get away with calling Bitcoin a ponzi.
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Neither of which even come close to the definition given above.
 
Nike7 said:
Please illustrate the contradiction for me.
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The definition requires quick returns (i.e. some kind of increase in the underlying "asset/token/item").

Neither BTC or fiat have an inherent mechanism to provide returns.

This is different to a bubble where an asset price becomes inflated for whatever reason, but the asset itself provides no (or insufficient) inherent returns (tulips, houses, dotcom etc).
 
Speedster said:
The definition requires quick returns (i.e. some kind of increase in the underlying "asset/token/item").

Neither BTC or fiat have an inherent mechanism to provide returns.

This is different to a bubble where an asset price becomes inflated for whatever reason, but the asset itself provides no (or insufficient) inherent returns (tulips, houses, dotcom etc).
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“quick returns to the first investors from money invested by later investors”

Are you saying that people who got into Bitcoin earliest didn’t make the most money? Are you saying that early investors weren’t buying Lamborghinis using fiat money made off of selling Bitcoin to the later investors? Are you saying the later investors didn’t take the lambo bought with their investments as a sign of an actual flourishing enterprise?

All the boxes are checked.

Forget fiat for a moment, that one is a different discussion.
 
Nike7 said:
“quick returns to the first investors from money invested by later investors”

Are you saying that people who got into Bitcoin earliest didn’t make the most money? Are you saying that early investors weren’t buying Lamborghinis using fiat money made off of selling Bitcoin to the later investors? Are you saying the later investors didn’t take the lambo bought with their investments as a sign of an actual flourishing enterprise?

All the boxes are checked.

Forget fiat for a moment, that one is a different discussion.
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I'm not saying any of that. I'm saying the guy who bought 1BTC in 2010 would have had 1BTC in 2022 (assuming no subsequent purchases/sales). The value of the BTC in terms of another asset (say USD) may have grown, but the 1BTC stayed 1BTC. This is asset price growth (and arguably a bubble).

Read the definition you gave again - it requires "belief in the success of a non-existent enterprise is fostered by the payment of quick returns to the first investors from money invested by later investors". What is the purported enterprise generating returns? And how are these returns distributed to initial members?

You're conflating what you believe to be irrational asset price growth with a ponzi.
 
Speedster said:
Read the definition you gave again - it requires "belief in the success of a non-existent enterprise is fostered by the payment of quick returns to the first investors from money invested by later investors". What is the purported enterprise generating returns?
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Fintech in some form? Very few of these people actually hodl, but I wouldn’t know.
Speedster said:
And how are these returns distributed to initial members?
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They sell for fiat? It’s a decentralised ponzi!
Speedster said:
You're conflating what you believe to be irrational asset price growth with a ponzi.
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It’s only an asset if it establishes itself as one. It has no value otherwise. This far it’s failed as a currency, and will maybe succeed as an alternative to gold. Until then…
 
Nike7 said:
Fintech in some form? Very few of these people actually hodl, but I wouldn’t know.

They sell for fiat? It’s a decentralised ponzi!

It’s only an asset if it establishes itself as one. It has no value otherwise. This far it’s failed as a currency, and will maybe succeed as an alternative to gold. Until then…
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You're either not reading what I'm saying, or you're choosing to ignore it. Also, you might want to revisit the definition of an asset.

Let me try one more time. Ponzi requires more than "asset" price growth, it needs the claim of some form of income generation. BTC has no claims of any enterprise causing income generation and therefore can't be a ponzi.
 
Speedster said:
You're either not reading what I'm saying, or you're choosing to ignore it. Also, you might want to revisit the definition of an asset.

Let me try one more time. Ponzi requires more than "asset" price growth, it needs the claim of some form of income generation. BTC has no claims of any enterprise causing income generation and therefore can't be a ponzi.
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I think you’re nitpicking but fine, we’ll agree to disagree.
 
Speedster said:
You're either not reading what I'm saying, or you're choosing to ignore it. Also, you might want to revisit the definition of an asset.

Let me try one more time. Ponzi requires more than "asset" price growth, it needs the claim of some form of income generation. BTC has no claims of any enterprise causing income generation and therefore can't be a ponzi.
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Bitcoin scamcoins may not offer interest payouts as the advertised or implied method of profit extraction but that difference aside the modus operandi is extremely similar and the end result the same.
Scamcoins aren’t legit coins that went rogue, they are scams from initiation.

While being true that scamcoins aren’t true Ponzi schemes, people understand what a ponzi implies and they are close enough that it’s understandable people lump together
 
airborne said:
Bitcoin scamcoins may not offer interest payouts as the advertised or implied method of profit extraction but that difference aside the modus operandi is extremely similar and the end result the same.
Scamcoins aren’t legit coins that went rogue, they are scams from initiation.

While being true that scamcoins aren’t true Ponzi schemes, people understand what a ponzi implies and they are close enough that it’s understandable people lump together
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Ponzi are a specific type of scam. Simply calling everything dodgy is a Ponzi kind of misses the point. Yes, there are scamcoins, but there are also a whole bunch that aren't.

And there is a big difference between a scam and a bad investment.
 
Speedster said:
Ponzi are a specific type of scam. Simply calling everything dodgy is a Ponzi kind of misses the point. Yes, there are scamcoins, but there are also a whole bunch that aren't.

And there is a big difference between a scam and a bad investment.
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How does calling a scamcoin a Ponzi miss the point, the modus operandi is very similar and so is the outcome. It's a great way to spread the word because everyone knows what a Ponzi is, it's doing no one a disservice.

I think your bugbear is people that lump all Bitcoin into the scam/ponzi category, which I don't believe that is the case but the fact remains there have been plenty Bitcoins that have been designed to scam and like a Ponzi the losses have been horrific.
 
Nike7 said:
Oh I see what you mean. I disagree, Bitcoin is too abstract and thus it is whatever people are using it for. A car is a silly analogy because it has attributes that lock in its identity as something other than a ponzi token, so if similar were to happen with cars you’d say that the car market is in a bubble.

@Speedster you’re right in that calling fiat a Ponzi scheme I can only say it metaphorically , based on the economics. It’s easier to get away with calling Bitcoin a ponzi.
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Ok bad example with the car. So gold then. It has no inherent attributes (other than scarcity) that drive the price. Forget industrial application for a moment - 150 years ago the price of gold had no relation to anything that was a property of the gold. We just found some metal and were tired of equally arbitrarily valuable seashells. So the attributes thing doesn't realllly hold much sway.

The intangibility of bitcoin is somewhat moot for me. We live in a world of digital stuff: Ja - you can't touch digital stuff.

So I'm not really sure what the argument is tbh. Someone created a technology and a bunch of things were built on that technology and in the human tradition we arbitrarily ascribed value to some of those things and some of those things were used to scam people. But I don't see how it follows that all those things are inherently ponzis or scams or whatever.
 
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