Any investment plan for which the benefit is the investment of the next is a ponzi.
So… just about every available investment vehicle currently in existence?
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I can agree with this part here somewhat.
I used to sell Kirby Vacuum Cleaners and Amway products, and literally all I was doing was selling their products to anyone who would buy and then find people who would also sell the products and earn a commission from them, If they got 100 people to sell the products I would be paid from all of those people, a pyramid scheme.
I must say though, the Kirby vacuum cleaner and the Amway products were amazing. but it was hard work selling it all.
They prefer the term “network marketing”
You know this is OoPE and all, so best to keep your kidney punches to C&P thank you very much.
Ice harvesting was a very large industry in America for about 150 years, Those cold-weather “crops” were their livelihood. Let’s focus on where this thread is currently and smooth away from picking on the ice-harvesting trade.
With my Kirby and Amway products (Ask any american and they will tell you both are amazing) many investors contributed to making their very high quality products which are good value for money.
Even though the pyramid part of these businesses were dodgy they still had great products, to describe this as a ponzi would be wrong, if you get where I’m going with this. The real money was in me finding lots of people to sell it for me.
A Kirby Vacuum was featured in the ET Movie back in the 80s 
And now imagine the products were bad (would break easily, slow to use, cheaper models already exist) and the sole benefit would be based on the money influx from new investors, if you get where I’m going with this.
I get you, the overall point is not everything is a ponzi or scam, This is why myself and others were trying to tell you about the technical features of BTC with a goal of fully understanding it before committing to an opinion.
You think the BTC product is bad when it isn’t. I honestly think it was designed to work in conjunction with fiat money, Where you’ve gone wrong is that you’ve judged it harshly without understanding it, (I can tell you don’t understand it based on what you’ve said)
But this point is useless.
I did not say everything is. There is a definition for what is. And the core of BTC is based on an investment scheme that matches the ponzi definition.
You think it is good when it isn’t.
I honestly think it was designed as a PoC and was not supposed to be used on a large scale, where you’ve gone wrong is that you’ve accepted it hastly without understanding its flaws.
No, In the early days I could have mined 1000s of BTC on a £100 laptop, this is 100% fact. so the fact I needed a £100 laptop to mine it does that make it a ponzi scheme? Everybody was aware that the new BTC generated would get lower and lower per cycle and require more processing power as more coins are brought into existence, anyone mining BTC knew this from the start.
You’ll need to understand that BTC didn’t start out being worth billions, and to get involved you could use the tech you already owned.
I need to invest in adequate saftey apparel if I am to work on a building site which will cost me, is this also a ponzi scheme? The retailer of this saftey apparel needs investors to invest in new buildings which will create a demand for the safety apparel which will be sold to the workers the investors employ, again is this a ponzi scheme?
Stop confusing legitimate business practices with scams/ponzi’s
You need to understand that this has no relation with what I wrote.
Your are completely missing the point, by using inadequate definitions.
Stop confusing your delusions with my words.
What you do is a strawman : you pretend that I’m talking about building sites, while I am not.
It does have relation to what you wrote, you claim BTC is a ponzi, I pointed out when BTC started and for many years after you didn’t need much hardware/investment to mine it, if BTC is a ponzi then explain why one needed little to no investment to start mining it?
Nothing delusional about what I wrote, I don’t have an issue accepting facts like you do,
No, you get real world arguments from me and logical questions based on factual evidence. There’s nothing wrong with pointing out that literally all business practices depend upon investment, this does not make them scams or ponzi schemes.
There simply has to be a demand for something in order for a product or service to exist. BTC is a solution for cheap money transfer and it’s good at keeping transactions private where both parties are happy to pay a small fee for the service.
All crypto have no value guaranteed. What that mean:
You go to a shop and want to buy a bottle of milk with your electronic token that was worth $1 dollar one day earlier, and you find it that shop doesnt want to sell bottle of milk to you, because overnight value of your token dropped to $0.001. Why you ask, and for what reason? Because everyone else just sold those tokens to buy actual $, and there are no more people willing to buy tokens anymore, maybe there are few that will pay $0.001 once a month or so, for collectibles…
Why did they sold it? Because its value started dropping below what they bought it for, or is near the threshold set up for gains, and the $ were taken out of investment literally. When we see many people send money to someone to get more money, and that turns out to not happen, they want their money back, but with all the promised gains. Only the gains are virtual, the gains are not real, only written on paper as on this moment perceived value that can change with people resigning from investment.
This is the situation we live in today. Crypto is in fact Ponzi Scheme, facilitated by exchanges. Before exchanges it was only barter using electronic tokens, method of exchange of
for other by use of an internet token. But what both sides agree to, varied. So essentially one BTC can be worth one , of varied kind.
Keep away from crypto, learn how to make .
You’d need a general understanding of crypto to be able to state such a claim, so far in this thread you have demonstrated you don’t have a full understanding of it, I don’t think your understanding of the economy is accurate either.
Both you and the either guy claimed it’s a ponzi without understanding the history of crypto, Many serious crypto miners who have expensive mining operations today started out mining crypto on equipment they already had so no real investment was required in the early day, even energy to power the operation was cheap. So I’m never going to understand why you think crypto (the actual blockchains and tokens they generate) are ponzi schemes.
Can the people who think it is a ponzi scheme give me an answer to why no real investment was required for crypto in the early days? If no one can then the argument that it’s a ponzi scheme is false.
For anyone interested in knowing the history of BTC mining
“Bitcoin mining was once nothing more than a lucrative hobby for nerdy cryptocurrency enthusiasts. The only hardware required, in the beginning, was a simple computer. Things have changed a lot in less than 10 years.”
This definitely does not match the description of a ponzi scheme, there doesn’t seem to be any demand for a large monetary payment or any mention of finding other people to make a large monetary payment. You may have to revise your opinion with these facts in mind.
Wikipedia definition of ponzi scheme: A Ponzi scheme is a form of fraud that lures investors and pays profits to earlier investors with funds from more recent investors .
I’ve tried hard to corroborate your claim and was unable to.
What is more important is understanding people behavior.
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I don’t know. Let’s say somebody wanted to do strictly fiat money trading, I would think it very important for them to understand all aspects of fiat money before investing. If they went into it with a lack of understanding they could lose a lot of money.
They might buy a load of a countries currency based on speculation that the value would increase then find some sort of political or economic event caused the value to go down. Does this sound familiar?
Lets say lots of people suddenly jumped into fiat money trading and faced massive loss due to not fully understanding what they’re doing, Does fiat money then become a ponzi scheme?
But whatever you trade, your trades are for human dependent asset.
FTX tokens were just that. Everything is.
You can use everything for Ponzi scheme, but it will be still Ponzi scheme.
What is most strange and troubling, people dont see that regulations are good in crypto scene, so some evil people use it to their advantage.
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Ponzi refers to financial investment, not physical investments. So you talking about “little to no invesment” is off topic.
Also even if it was, the “little to no” is not relevant. Your post would be a non sequitur.
I thought transactions were public on the blockchain ?
Also, it’s only cheap when investors invest. Once they don’t, you have to find people to pay the miners. Or they lose money.
So no, it’s not cheap : it’s only cheap while the ponzi is expanding. Once it is no more, it’s expensive, slow, public, unregulated, unstable.
People can use Ponzi Schemes for physical objects also.
Lets say you give me 1 apple, and I will give you 2 apples, but you have to wait one year, you have a guaranteed receipt in a form of a small special marked apple seed. You ask what will happen if you give me 10 apples, and I answer you will receive 20 apples and you will get those seeds as guarantee.
I have an apple exchange, where people send me apples, and they receive marked seeds.
Next year I am not anywhere all those people who gave me all the apples, because I ate them all, and they can keep the seeds.
Dont even have to send them back any apples. All I need is to promise them they will get more than they sent me. It is of course a fraud and prohibited, Its like stealing, but using a trick. You make people trust you and then they give you something, because they are greedy. Ha!
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