Bitcoin Forum

http://www.garynorth.com/public/11828.cfm

This is so badly written I feel I could write a better article despite not being a 'wealth building strategist'.

Kinda makes me wonder if anything else he says is as well researched...

And yet you did not debunk a single thing he said.

I don't know exactly what revans wrote/linked (since he is on my ignore all I can see is the title) but there should be a system on this board that if more than 100 people have you on ignore you get automatically banned from posting anything.

That would make this place an even bigger circlejerk than it already is

A ponzi is illegal in every situation.

Bitcoin is not illegal so it cannot qualify to be a ponzi.

Well that wraps that up. Quickest thread ever. Another epic fail by Revans.
Are we on Bitcoin is doomed fact #134 or doomed fact #135? I can't keep track.  :D

his argument is just BTC=ponzi

if it were true, I'd answer: "ok, it's a ponzi, but it's OUR ponzi"  :)

Yep, when it comes crashing down, make sure you retain the point of view....YOU OWN IT.

Why does anyone need to cash out their bitcoins? Bitcoins can be used as currency, so why does anyone need to convert back to dollars? If everyone just stopped doing that, we would eventually end up with a bitcoin-only economy.

A Ponzi scheme is when you hand your money over to someone and they promise to use it to buy an investment, but instead they give your money away to another "investor".

When you buy Bitcoin, you are buying your spot in the blockchain, and when you sell, you're transferring your ownership of that spot.  The same as a stock.

All investments are purchased because people expect them to go up in price.  If lots of people are piling in, and the price is skyrocketing, that doesn't make it a scam, that means lots of people think it's a good investment.

Bitcoins are already an alternative currency.  They don't have to be "the money of the future".  They can remain an alternative currency, or an investment (a store of value).

Yep.  Jealous much?

Because if nobody did that there would be no way for people to acquire Bitcoins and then whole thing would collapse. Are you really that dumb?

If anyone is dumb, it's you.
Where do your dollars come from? Do you buy them with bitcoins? Or do you get them, because you sell something to others? (e.g. workforce)

If fiat money ceased to exist, then the way to acquire BTC would be to work for it.  But BTC is way too new and scarce for that.  For the time being, the way to get BTC is to buy it. 

Moron

There is precious little commerce conducted via Bitcoin, it isn't really a viable way for most people to acquire Bitcoins.

Well, that's not true. The original shell game by Charles Ponzi is what made such a scheme "malum prohibitum." Legality isn't a necessary condition of a ponzi scheme.

That is the case atm. So what?

(1) His basic premise is 100% flawed because he obviously does not know the definition of a Ponzi Scheme.

(2) North should sit on his hands and quit bugging people who know what they are doing and are obviously happier than he is.

By the way, for those of you who do not know, here is the definition of a Ponzi Scheme and if you read it, you will clearly understand why Bitcoin and cryptocurrency in general does NOT meet that definition:

http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Ponzi+Scheme

"Ponzi Scheme

A fraudulent investment plan in which the investments of later investors are used to pay earlier investors, giving the appearance that the investments of the initial participants dramatically increase in value in a short amount of time.

A Ponzi scheme is a type of investment Fraud that promises investors exorbitant interest if they loan their money. As more investors participate, the money contributed by later investors is paid to the initial investors, purportedly as the promised interest on their loans. A Ponzi scheme works in its initial stages but inevitably collapses as more investors participate.

A Ponzi scheme is a variation of illegal pyramid sales schemes. In a pyramid sales plan, a person pays a fee to become a distributor. Once the person becomes a distributor, he receives commissions not only for the products he sells but also for products sold by individuals that he brings into the business. These new distributors are beneath the person who brought them into the pyramid scheme, so they are "under the pyramid." In illegal pyramid schemes, only the people at the top of the pyramid make substantial money because they get a commission from the products sold by everyone below them. As more people become distributors, the persons lower in the pyramid have less chance to make money.

A Ponzi scheme was once was called a "bubble," but it was renamed in 1920 after Charles Ponzi and his Boston-based company had collected almost $10 million from ten thousand investors by selling promissory notes that claimed to pay 50 percent profit in forty-five days. When the scheme was exposed, a Boston bank collapsed, and investors lost most of their money.

Ponzi, an Italian immigrant, thought of profiting from the widely varying currency exchange rates for International Postal Reply Coupons (IPRCs), which were redeemed for stamps. IPRCs were intended to facilitate the sending of international mail. The sender put an IPRC, rather than a stamp, on a piece of mail going to another country, and the recipient exchanged the IPRC for the appropriate stamp in her country.

Ponzi contended that he could pay a small amount for IPRCs in weak-currency countries and then redeem them at a substantial profit in the United States. He correctly noted that a stamp transaction might yield a 400 percent profit, but the amount of profit in real terms was very small. Nevertheless, he promoted his idea through his Boston-based Securities Exchange Company. In March 1920 he began soliciting funds for purchasing the IPRCs with a promised 40 percent return in ninety days. Bank interest rates at the time were just five percent. Investors started loaning Ponzi their money, and within a short time he increased the promised return on forty-five-day notes to 50 percent. He also promised a 100 percent return on funds loaned to him for ninety days. He pledged to refund money on demand to any investor before the loan period was up.

Money soon flooded Ponzi's offices. By July 1920 he was taking in $1 million a week. Ponzi made an arrangement with the Hanover Trust Company of Boston to deposit his funds. Hanover officials soon realized that Ponzi was not paying his initial investors with interest income but with the deposits of the new investors. Nevertheless, the bank eagerly sold Ponzi a large amount of its stock.

On August 2, 1920, a Boston newspaper revealed the fraud and reported that Ponzi was hopelessly insolvent. Thousands of victims immediately demanded refunds. Ponzi paid as many as he could but exhausted his funds in a week. He then declared Bankruptcy. In bankruptcy, the court ordered all of the persons who had been paid by Ponzi during the life of the scheme to return the proceeds to the bankruptcy trustee, who distributed the money on a pro rata basis to all of the other victims. Ponzi was eventually convicted of fraud in both state and federal court and imprisoned for several years.

The Ponzi scheme did not end with Charles Ponzi. It has proved to be a reliable scam in which persons are lured into giving their money to con artists who promise enormous financial returns. The early cycle of a Ponzi scheme appears to confirm the reliability of the investment, as some investors are paid the promised returns. The scheme is doomed to collapse when not enough new money exists to pay old obligations.Gullible individuals are not the only victims of Ponzi schemes. In the early 1990s, John G. Bennett, Jr., and his Foundation for New Era Philanthropy lured many U.S. universities and nonprofit groups into investing millions of dollars in the foundation. Bennett promised these organizations that they would double their money in six months with the help of anonymous philanthropists. In May 1995 Prudential Securities, Inc., where most of the funds were deposited, discovered that New Era was under federal investigation and froze its accounts.

The action triggered New Era's bankruptcy. Bennett was later charged with eighty-two counts of fraud, Money Laundering, and income Tax Evasion. As with the original Ponzi scheme, defrauded investors agreed to be reimbursed for up to 65 percent of their losses, with the money coming from groups that had deposited money with New Era early in the scheme and made a profit.

Internationally, the nation of Albania was plunged into civil unrest in 1997 when a multimillion-dollar Ponzi scheme collapsed. Many Albanians had invested large amounts of their savings in the scheme, which allegedly had the backing of Albanian government officials. Faced with economic ruin, citizens rioted against the government."

Ignore the goofy bastard is my advice.

My $.02.

;)

This lovely piece of work also thinks social security is a ponzi scheme.

Finally time to click Revan's ignore button?  I think so.  :(

Because it is...

This ponzi ponzi crap is getting so annoying lately.
Also loved that stuff were "dollars " are money.

+1

+1

+ 10

Rubbish, if it was a ponzi scheme you wouldn't have Millions of dollars worth of investments pouring into infrastructure projects. If it was a ponzi scheme it wouldn't been over already with the few ultra rich cashing out their hundreds of millions and Bitcoin dies..Bitcoin is here to stay.

Here is just the thing: What kind of money is really needed for Bitcoin infrastructure? BitPay for instance, they run the website, so a handful of webdevs, and then some journalists for PR, and then that's it. (Besides server and office costs that's it).
So what might happen with the VC money in the end? I'll tell you, most of it is sent to the exchange to buy Bitcoins.







Then you are all ignoring the most important argument: Bitcoins are no money because they do not have a "predictable" exchange rate. In practical terms that means nobody prices things in Bitcoins.
Everybody prices things in USD, EUR in the end, even when they produce the product.

OP is trying his best to talk down the price and discredit bitcoin.

Keep trying...it is funny to see you try.

Entertainment at its finest.  ;D ;D ;D

Gary North is a bright guy and he is right that social security is a Ponzi (the money that is paid in now is used to pay benefits to previous contributors - the capital is long gone).

However, he is wrong about bitcoin (as are many, though by no means all Austrian economists).  If you read the article, his main objection is the lack of a stable value. But a period of hyper-monetisation is inevitable during the transition from non-money to money. During that period, volatility is inevitable. It could not be otherwise because nothing appreciates in value smoothly.

The reality is that there is no historical precedent for bitcoin. Analogies with the monetisation of gold and silver hundreds or thousands of years ago are of limited use.

Darpa and the NSA started bitcoin so no need to worry about it failing. Its the NSA's wet dream to track all that money floating around and since they invented the crypto for it, dont you think they know how to break it. So bring on the waves of ups and downs and get this S-curve moving up. And someone on here Please give Revans some f$cking bitcoin so he will shut the f$ck up.

He would just sell.

He actually argues for Bitcoin.

Here is the central fact of money. Money is the product of the market process. It arises out of an unplanned, decentralized process. This takes time. It takes a lot of time. It spreads slowly, as new people discover it as a tool of production, because it increases the size of the market for all goods and services. No one says, "I think I'll invent a new form of money."

This is what is happening now with Bitcoin. "Money arises out of an unplanned." Bitcoin is largely an unplanned decentralized medium. "Money arises out of the market process". The markets are being developed now for bitcoin. "Money takes time and spreads slowly." The same is happening with Bitcoin. It will take a long time for adoption. So his point about Bitcoin not being money is correct. But the next question is will it ever be considered money? It's possible, if a majority of people in a region use it to conduct business. If we look at it in that sense, I think one could argue that Bitcoin is money in the BTC end user mining market. All mining devices can be purchased with BTC. BTC is a tool of production in the end user mining market.

So which is the first biggest ponzi scheme, he never mentioned that?

Lol at
"On June 29, 2009, he was sentenced to 150 years in prison with restitution of $17 billion."
150 YEARS, I mean seriously? Never heard that before

He was not referring to Madoff. He was referring to Social Security (new contributors fund payments to old contributors. Capital was spent on wars and stuff years ago)

its hard too know where to start with this guy its so full off errors

here the first one, gov currency is also made up, eg needs to understand FIAT currency and fractional reserve banking.

Peak Month and Rate of Inflation: Nov. 1923, 29,525% Germany, that makes BTC deflation look rather tame.

What is happening now is the Govs just keep printing and taxing, and the whole edifice pumping, while we see cost of living go up while buying power goes down. BTC can now catch all this excess printing

Well said, according to his theory, pretty much every single investment be it stock, assets or commodity is a ponzi scheme.

And, most of the time, it is a Ponzi scheme. Even the paper currency by itself is one. But governments call it 'inflation', sounds better. Or 'social security'. Or 'taxes'.

So do you like articles?

Here is one for you...

http://falkvinge.net/2013/11/06/bitcoins-real-revolution-isnt-hard-money-its-economic-panarchy/

  Etatistic people are just mad about currency they can't control.    You can't build any other ponzi on ponzi basis. :). The very existing of bitcoin based ponzies and hyip'es proves it's just a mean of payment.

You can there is strong evidence that pirate invested in another ponzi with his proceeds.

You might consider educating yourself:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7u4F8cpzqao

I think it's important to have people that have a different opinion.  I wouldn't want to ignore revans just Coz he is annoying and on the other side.( even if he's wrong).

+1

New bitcoins can be mined as well  :)

And lose Chartbuddy?

If people choose to ignore other posters, that's their business, but I prefer to see what other people think or pretend to think.

I don't even ignore obvious trolls like Revans, EM or Walso. I use them as a source of humor.

Ponzi investments also "store money" btw. The utility is not tied to the value or even the ledger (Litcoins, etc..). Also that money isn't directly payed to late early investors is a mere technicality, that there is no middle man does not mean it's not a ponzi.

The only valid distinction is that the cashout/cash in is external on the exchanges.
Biggest pump & dump scheme in history how about that?

Oh and network effect? Well that's the thing where it works the same way like a ponzi.

It is US dollar after the gold backing is removed 1971, and that ponzi scheme has been running for 42 years :D