Bitcoin Forum

First, I am NOT saying cryptocurrency is worthless or useless, far from it, so get that idea out of your head. Second, if you don't understand exactly what a ponzi scheme is don't even bother reading any further. I want you to KNOW what a ponzi scheme is:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBGgHT2UT7o&t=18s

Or go to YouTube and search "What is a Ponzi scheme Moneyweek Investment Tutorials". The entire video just keep thinking Roger Ver, Roger Ver.

The overwhelming majority of Bitcoin in existence was obtained for essentially nothing by miners and early adopters for mere pennies. Roger Ver probably has 100,000. Until mid 2016, the price had remained mostly steady, although still volatile. In just the last year Bitcoins value has increased from $500 to almost $5000. But what is causing the price to rise so quickly to there incredible levels? You want to believe its because more people are entering the market, but that's not how it works. Cryptocurrency is unregulated, meaning it's completely possible for there not to be a market at all, but a market simulation. I'm telling you the market IS a simulation. People are seeing the consistent price increases in pretty much everything and don't want to miss out, so more and more people are buying in. We all have dreams of Bitcoin hitting $100,000 or higher. Then we've got people like Roger Ver, Jeff Berwick, Andreas M. Antonopoulos touting Bitcoin as the savior of humanity, which not only convinces more people to buy in, but also hold. And to be fair, maybe Berwick and Andreas are as naive as we are, but they were in early. This creates market liquidity. Meanwhile, they can sell their bitcoins obtained for mere pennies for ungodly profits. As long as the price continues to increase, people aren't converting back to fiat and new people will continue to buy in. Like on this recent dip, I always hear "buy on the dips". Suckers!! At some point, the "market" will decrease significantly causing millions of people to sell and attempt to convert back to fiat. But there won't be any liquidity left as the original investors have been cashing out. New investors giving their money to old investors. It's a classic ponzi scheme, the largest in history.

So you have a $1,000,000 portfolio and understand it's a ponzi scheme. Oh shit, time to sell!! Well, good luck. Coinbase withdrawal limit is only $10k per day. There just isn't an easy way to convert large amounts, a fact that is always overlooked. The fact of the matter is most people have already lost most of their money. They just don't know it yet.

Poloniex updated their ToS to include the inability to be involved in class action lawsuits the day before Bitcoin forked. Why, coincidence? If you went to sleep with 1 BTC @ $2800, you woke up with 1 BTC @ $2800 and 1 BCH @ $400. $400 of "free money". From where? Coinbase, one of the few exchanges that allows conversion back to fiat, refused to release their customers BCH until January. Why so long? Because that $400 doesn't exist, they don't want anyone selling, for obvious reasons. Roger Ver probably has 100,000 BTC, so he had a $40,000,000 pay day, just for owning it. And you better believe he's already cashed out. But have any of you? Poloniex refused to release their BCH until August 14th, my best guess being they were waiting for someone to question where the $400 came from. Seriously, am I the only one questioning it? We dodged a bullet. And remember, that $400 from nowhere is also sloshing around in other cryptocurrencies. Ethereum will fork not once, but twice the end of this month. Why twice? Knowing what you know now about Bitcoin Cash, makes a little more sense doesn't it. Do you see anything wrong with my logic?

Roger Ver has parts in Bitpay, BitStamp, Kraken, Shapeshift, Purse, Ripple...everything Bitcoin. He's, well, Bitcoin Jesus. But he'd be prosecuted and hung by his balls, right? Well, not exactly.

https://qz.com/221598/marriott-is-helping-bitcoin-jesus-sell-cheap-citizenship-in-the-caribbean/

The only reason I know is because stole $17k that would be $250k today from me and I've been trying to prove it ever since. Yeah I went a little bigger, huh? We've been had fellas. Sure, laugh, you better pray I'm wrong. I know what I saw on the Poloniex exchange. It's all fake. China is on to it and that is the reason they have banned exchanges.

BTC: 1NHmYxrnxiBkGjhEed3VPso3oY9mnbuqSx
ETH: 0xb6F4a3974Da40Ba92377bF8E61C3E8323f1ba326

We still have until at least the Ethereum fork, unless word gets out sooner.

My only problem with crypto is the ability to fork and produce lots of money from nowhere - otherwise it is perfect for me.. man, I hate that practice, wish they could find ways to address it . We don't want crypto to  become another fiat. All "Regulated" Governments constantly print trillions out of nowhere. Crypto must avoid copying the "governments" by all means.

Didn't know about st. kitts but what point are you exactly trying to make other than we supposedly get a ''new elite'' but instead of banking it will be crypto.
Honestly fiat isn't exactly worth anything more than crypto, it's just the believe in these currencies that gives it is value. Expecting we can get goods and services in return for a note, coin or a byte.

If you really want to be save during all this and you're expecting the worse you're better off just hodling gold. I would be hodling gold/silver way rather than crypto or fiat.

You don't think the same happens on wall street? How many people invest and lose their money in DOW, AEX or other baskets. It's always a small group of people making money over the back of others. the whole financial institution is a ponzi scheme. Society is a ponzi scheme, we always make everyone compete and in a race of 10 people, 100 people or a million there's gonna be only 1 no. 1 and 1 no. 2 and 1 no. 3 etc.

I really like the idea of crypto aswell and I understand your concern but when talking about the negatives of these currencies fiat and crypto are just as worse. Crypto however is stimulated by an idealogy of sovereign money. Now I think all idealogy's are inherently uncorrect, the word wrong would be too strong.
And crypto cannot fully ever replace fiat, it ain't possible.

Fiat and crypto cannot last forever, nothing does. It seems that gold, silver and other metals are the only things that can guarantee any form of safety net when things go bad.
If you really forsee such a thing happening as you described where you get a run on the exchanges but there's no money then you're best off going into gold and silver cause it could skyrocket harder than bitcoin eve will.

Crypto creates money out of nowhere and so do the banks with fiat, in the end it's a large group getting F******* by a small group but people are to divided and selfish.

Think of the worst case scenario: China banned Google, Facebook & Twitter years ago. They're doing fine. And they ain't even decentralized.
this is just a game made in china , if you already know long china character you must already know the decision that you specify later.

I agree with your point, now china is not holding the major position to shake the market, china is trying fully to pull the bitcoin price down but other country are fully giving support and next week we will see the price going back to 4800 level

You have to differentiate between a hard fork based in a strong consensus and a contentious hard fork.

With a strong consensus the minority chain (measured by hashrate) dies off more or less immediately and the coins mined on it have no value and
therefore no money is produced out of thin air. However, with a contentious hard fork you get two working chains, which
produces the situation that you describe.

Besides, the ability to fork is a great thing. Hard forks genereally aren´t done for fun by developers and users, but rather to address criticial
security flaws or introduce innovation in some form. I can´t believe that you see this as a bug, this is a feature of cryptocurrencies!

first of all every single satoshi is obtained by miners. that is how bitcoin is programmed. it has never been like altcoins with premine.

secondly, it was not for nothing. it is for the work they have done. the so called "CPU power" they spent on bitcoin for proving us with proof of work. that warrants the payment they receive.

and as for early adopters, you can't really blame someone for seeing the potential before you did. it is like talking about early investors in Apple when they bought the shares for ridiculously cheap prices!

it has never been steady. from day one high volatility is a part of bitcoin. the rises of 10x from $0.1 to $1 or $1 to $10 or the huge bubble of $2 are the things you have forgotten to check on the charts. and they seem lost to you now.

adoption bro, adoption.
have you checked the media lately? they are talking about bitcoin nonstop. countries are now calling bitcoin "a legal way of payment" or a "legal currency". don't you think that is more than enough for this "incredible levels" and more?

haha, you just contradicted yourself ;D

how would you know?
have you seen my bank account before i started with bitcoin and compared it with now?
how do you think price goes down each time there is a rise? that is people selling. those red candles on the charts after a couple of big green ones are us selling to get the money out and then buy back at the bottom again with more profit or take some money out and invest back the principle.

the fact that you don't understand how the market works and the fact that you have never seen any other market that has gone up to $250,000 (yes it is happening in real world if you get out of the basement) doesn't mean they are impossible. it means your vision is limited.

Ponzi scheme
ˈpɒnzi/Submit
noun
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.

To clarify for you:  Bitcoin is not an enterprise, nor an investment program, nor does it pay returns, nor do people actually get "paid" returns - they just hold an asset that increases in value.

Bitcoin holds no characteristics of a Ponzi scheme.  By your logic, gold is a Ponzi scheme, but it simply isn't.
You're right.  They're private individuals encouraging people to hold an asset class.

So if someone promotes buying gold as a safe haven, does that make gold a Ponzi scheme?

---

It doesn't matter if the price is fueled by people buying and holding or by market manipulation.  You simply do not understand the basic meaning of a Ponzi scheme.

China didn1't banned cryptos and cryptocurrency is not a ponzy

Next topic

It seems to me that bitcoin has all the hallmarks of a Ponzi scheme. Any currency must feed production. Then she is growing and developing. In the case of bitcoin, we see only speculative capital. Its price grows only by a constant influx of money.

It's not a PONZI scheme it's a PRYRAMID scheme.  ;D

Governments and  banks are BIGGEST scam. They printed paper and called it money and a push the society to use it.

Bitcoin is freedom and it was spreading by mining with Proof of work and that was very fair all people over the world.

Now the hundred of years scammers is called thier new competitor as scam..just wait and see who will win.

It is a market that needs government guidance and regulations. Why do you think big guns over at Twitter just kept spreading the news about China ban without even half of them questioning anything? Because they know that the fake news will spread panic among weak hands and that the prices will fall temporarily which means that these people can continue to buy cheap coins and keep increasing their wealth.

Without regulations you will see alot more scam coins and alot more greedy people joining the community in hopes of increasing their wealth and spreading panic among investors.

the reason china is cracking down is because they're determined to retain control of their population's money. they ended bitcoin's use as a currency in 2014 just as they did for qq coin and others in the past.

anyone throwing the word ponzi around is a worthless moron.

This is something I equally share and I must say after I have read the entire episode of what Op has said, the last part of the statement shows that he is not being objective because if not because of the alleged amount stolen from him, then he will be good with everything that is going on and would equally be counting his blessing about entering the bitcoin industry so early. Or what other explanation would he give to a 17k worth of bitcoin turning into over 250k worth in short period of time. He also went further to post his address to show he still believes in bitcoin and Roger that's another height of insinceirty in what he is preaching.

Well, given that the Chinese arn't allowed to actually buy or sell goods and services with bitcoin, for them it is just a speculative token. So i guess from their point of view it's a ponzi scheme.

we'll see later, surely our guess is true , china wants full power in cryptocurrency, but their way is easy to guess. people who are new to cryptocurrency will surely panic about this news , if people who know cryptocurrency more than 2-3 years must respond to normal and take advantage of this good moment to buy back Bitcoin.

100% correct. Those who are doubtful can visit the following links and verify themselves:

https://www.okcoin.cn/
https://exchange.btcc.com/
https://www.huobi.com/
https://www.chbtc.com/
https://www.c2cx.com/in/home
https://www.51szzc.com/
https://www.btctrade.com/

Not that is not a ponzi, I think because china is one big enough country to take part in cryptocurrency so they feel that if they banned bitcoin will have a big effect on the price, maybe its government try to monopolize bitcoin price, when bitcoin down they buy as much as possible, and when bitcoin price rise again they dump(maybe). but who knows? only the Chinese government and GOD knows, chinese is smart but also cunning. that is my opinion

They want to build a "great wall" to anything that may disrupt the current system in their country

Do people really think they are doing this? Playing the market by regulating and banning?
I see people say China is buying for low prices.

The price isn't "low" anymore, and what kind of investors or regular users will be attracted to a market that get's banned when a government needs to "buy in".

I'm just not buying these stories.

OP: You are the one who does not understand what is a ponzi scheme, your arguments are trying to convice that it is a bubble, nothing to do with a ponzi.
And not, it is not a bubble (yet). It is just a new thing that many people like you do not understand and try to connect with old things that they know.

This is exactly my point. From now on, we have to promote the idea that China is not necessary for the survival and mainstream adoption of Bitcoin and that of cryptocurrency in general. We are not excluding China because Bitcoin is an open kind of thing but if China does now want Bitcoin then let it be...let's move on because I am sure that soon there would be other countries that are more open-minded and would love to be part of the Bitcoin movement.

China will never be the end for Bitcoin...far from it and in fact there are many big and valuable companies now that are not doing business in China yet they are doing just fine. Facebook is one hell of a company and yet it is not having a presence in China. China is just another one of those overrated country in terms of importance.

It is about time we get this message to the whole world. Bitcoin can go on without China!

The news is too misguided, no Ponzi in bitcoin. Only a fool would apply this system.
Some people try to take advantage of this situation to push the price of Bitcoin. The government is afraid of losing its power in managing finances.
this is very shameful this action is purely due to taxes, and bitcoin does not know the tax.

Government of China is really afraid regarding on managing finances if they do let their citizens do engage with Bitcoin and ICO.This is why they do make such decisions just to block the further possible effects of bitcoin into their economy since money aren't circulating at its full extent because of cryptocurrency investment.As long they cant impose taxes they will ban anything.

This is the second thread started by this person with the word 'Ponzi' in the title. I think he could do with a holiday or a crowd funded hand job.

I won't deny a single word of yours. In the case of fiat, the Federal Reserve manages the money supply. In case of people hoarding cash, then it will pump massive amount of cash into the system causing the value of said cash going down slightly, hence stopping people from hoarding money. Same is happening with cryptos now and it is a sad thing.

Pure speculation. China's main issue here is control. Ponzi Scheme in what aspect? Bitcoin is a currency not an investment ( it looks like but it is not, and it is not bitcoin's original use and bitcoin's primary function.).

China's plan is quite simple. They want to end the petro-dollar and have said countries can sell there oil to Chinese Yuan which they can transfer into Gold.

China also let's people buy Yuan from other Fiat Currencies, but not sell Yuan into other Fiat currencies. It's a one-way direction only.

The reason they have banned ICO's is to stop people transferring Yuan into other things.

What I am saying is basically China is trying to make their currency into the World's Reserve Currency. So if Cryptocurrency stops their plan they will take action against it. They don't care about Cryptocurrency, they just want to stop Chinese people selling Chinese Yuan.

Lastly, Chinese Yuan is a different Fiat currency, it's 'PEGGED' not 'Floating' meaning they have a fixed price and its not moving, this helps keep the yuan down and they can sell all their products cheaply to the world.

They will not absolutely ban exchanges. China will put stricter regulations to these exchanges because there might be some problems to exchanges that China have seen and try to solve it by adding these strict rules.

Op, your whole Ponzi argument is based on labor theory of value - the value of something is equal to costs of its production. So, in your mind Bitcoin should cost pennies because it was acquired for pennies. The problem is, real market doesn't care about it, people base prices on their personal feelings, costs of production is just the bottom line for a seller. It's true that some people are hodling since early days and would get insane returns when they decide to sell, but there are much more people who sold earlier, so it's wrong to say that all Bitcoins were acquired cheaply. And lastly, read the story of bearwhale - a good example how market can soak up dumps of early investors and continue growing.