Bitcoin Forum

Just wondering if anyone has changed their ideas yet about bitcoin?

All you have read over the last months and even today is people saying how you will get rich etc. To buy buy buy.

Pushing a digital coin which doesn't offer anything unique vs the other unlimited alt coins.

A digital coin that doesn't do anything better than fiat.

The ultimate sophisticated Ponzi scheme, so sophisticated you can even argue that it isn't a Ponzi scheme.

Anyone brave enough to admit it or will we only have the cheerleaders in here posting how bitcoin is going to the moon.

Pump and Dump - yes
Ponzi - impossible by design

yeah I guess if you want to get technical with the definition, it is more of a pump and dump. Although it has a lot of similarities to a Ponzi Scheme.

Go away ed.

It more closely resembles a pyramid scheme (but so does every other commodity ever traded).
 
Government currencies are ponzi schemes because when they collapse the central banks come out rich.

So wrong.  Commodities are priced on supply & demand.  Soybeans, oil, coal..all these commodities are priced on supply demand.  Not pyramid at all

Government currencies are not Ponzi.  Ponzi is taking in new investment money to pay earlier investors.  Giving them the impression the investment is profitable so they invest more money.

In fairness BTC is not a Ponzi either.  Its a pump & dump.  Early investors try to draw in new investors to drive up price so they can dump their holdings

Watch BTC price bottom out THIS MONTH and go higher from here through the rest of the year.  ;D

Hard to say. I don't think so  but the only one who can tell is Mr. Nakamoto ( or the inventors of Bitcoin whoever they are ).

But cryptocurrencies have attracted a huge ammount of lowlife and scammer. They surely do everything they can to turn it into one. It doesn't help.

Ed what bank do you work for?

Is Bitcoin priced on a principle other than supply and demand? The pyramid scheme isn't imbued into the commodity being traded. The distribution of availability creates a pyramidal distribution. Each traded commodity has groups and organizations that drive the markets; look at gold, silver, and oil as examples.

The government ponzi doesn't ask for a voluntary investment; they do however take money to pay the earlier investors (treasury bonds being only one example). It is a Ponzi scheme, just one with the ability to force investment of wealth with higher taxes, inflation of the money supply, etc...

They then use the worthless fiat proceeds of this ponzi to manipulate tangible assets like real estate, gold, silver, oil, etc...

Wrong. To get rich You must work work work!Wrong again. Altcoins does not offer anything unique vs Bitcoin.Really? Can I anonymously buy pound of ganja and get discount order on submachine gun and pay for the order with cash with two clicks of my computer mouse while stroking my penis with other hand? While remaining completely anonymous and untraceable? Bitcoin offers that freedom and efficiency. Fiat does not.

Bitcoin look more like Goatse than Ponzi scheme. And Bitcoin is not Goatse either. Bitcoin is Bicoin.

What other ways are there to anonymously move money across borders? There is a high demand for this, and for now Bitcoin is the consensus method. Until something markedly superior comes along, Bitcoin will have considerable value.

Have you stopped beating your wife yet?

Its based on supply demand.  But my reply was to correct the guy who said "all commodities are pyramids".  They are not.  A pyramid is you invest $100 and when you bring in 5 other investors you get $500 in return.  What I said was BTC is a pump & dump

I'll have to agree to disagree that's not what Ponzi scheme means so you can't apply that to govt currency.  In a Ponzi scheme is investors are paid on supposed profit but the money actually coming in from new investors

+1 Exactly that

BTC is not a Ponzi in any shape or form. The Protocol ensures that.

It looks as if the communication broke down between us; I communicate very literally. When I wrote "It more closely resembles a pyramid scheme (but so does every other commodity ever traded)." I literally meant that every commodity is subject to the same uneven distribution. The majority of every commodity is in the hands of a few, then the pyramid forms on top of that.

When I mentioned the resemblance to a pyramid scheme I wasn't insinuating that the pyramid is formed from a malicious intent. Bringing in more investment capitol into any traded commodity will increase the potential return.

I will accept the "agree to disagree"  on the government Ponzi. When I look at a Ponzi scheme, I see a chain between the creator of a Ponzi and the rest of the investors; the money always funnels from the bottom towards the top. The Federal Reserve is a singular organization funneling value from everybody else. The income tax revenue is given to the Fed, the income tax is an involuntary investment which is used to pad the pockets of a single group. I consider that a Ponzi...

Income tax isn't used for any other purpose but to pay the Fed; every beneficial use of tax money is drawn from various Sales taxes or specific and separately defined employment taxes.

No, it is not a ponzi scheme.  :)

yep, like gold, silver and stocks.

What an in depth and sophisticated response from this user :D

Wait, what? The beating was supposed to stop?

Our monetary system is the biggest Ponzi scheme around.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFDe5kUUyT0

Yes ... ponzi because we (the people) is only on the top left on the screen (green cloud).

http://imageshack.com/a/img716/2961/sd3g.jpg
http://imageshack.com/a/img716/2961/sd3g.jpg

So I've been using Ed as a contrarian indicator...
Expect BITCOIN TO DA MOON any day now.

trolololo

I does have something unique and very important: a lot of places to spend it

Most alts have little more than a few exchanges and maybe a dice game, but bitcoin has many businesses that accept it, which gives it use as something other than just a speculating game.

yes, it is digital fiat tbh

I think ponzi is the wrong term.  It more resembles a pyramid.  Not the tech, that's irrelevant but the way it's promoted is 100% pyramid.  That's why it doesn't matter how many businesses "accept" Bitcoin, the price keeps falling. Nobody is buying and certainly not to use as a transactional currency.   ::)  Greed killed Bitcoin and better alternatives, with better distribution will reign.  You see, it doesn't matter how high you can pump the price of something, if it's not useful to people, they won't use it.  It's as simple as that.  

yeaa... wait until you'll get to save transaction fees from the average products and services you buy.. worldwide..  :o

Most people don't buy worldwide, they buy local.  On top of that, Bitcoin's not useful because it is poorly distributed and slow.  For remittences, there are already better options.  Just because Bitcoin was first, doesn't mean it will be here in the end.  As a long time Bitcoin bear, none of this is surprising.  It was inevitable.   People can't spend, what they don't have.

well, one of the major groceries stores from where i live is going to implement bitcoin payments within this year. :P

So.  How many people have Bitcoin where you live?  People just don't seem to get it.  Look how many merchants have joined since the $1200 run up.  Did it matter? No, because nobody has Bitcoins to spend and those that do have them are holding. But it makes sense, why in the hell would you spend a deflationary currency?   ::)

time dude time. cant fight progress. they'll be plenty of incentives for using bitcoins.

Open your eyes man.

I doubt it.  Like I said, most people will never own Bitcoins and they honestly don't need to.  The double-spend problem has been solved. The tech can be duplicated and enhanced in an infinite number of ways now.  At this point, there is nothing unique about Bitcoin other than it was first. Any merchant accepting Bitcoin can easily accept an alternative and they will move to that which consumers deem useful, which means it needs to be available.  And of course, not taxed as property.  That's just a non-starter.

Ahhh so nice to be young and naive...

Bitcoins are a currency.  It only becomes a type of "scheme" if we keep linking it to Fiat currencies.

IF the time comes where WE decide the a BITCOIN is a BITCOIN and people that buy and sell goods for Bitcoins keep fixed prices (accounting for inflation) then the market volatility will go AWAY.

People are treating Bitcoins more like Stock instead of a currency.  Until people change the way they use Bitcoins, there will be volatility.

Edward50 are you a "sock puppet" that usually only posts during Bear markets?
If you hate BTC so much, why are you here?

You got it backwards.  Any super cool features discovered by alts will be absorbed by bitcoin.

Name:   Edward50
Posts:   639
Activity:   406
Position:   Sr. Member
Date Registered:   June 09, 2011, 11:48:20 PM
Last Active:   Today at 12:41:47 AM


The date you registered 3 years ago marked the absolute peak of the 2011 growth spurt--bitcoin crashed by 93% over the coming months.  Your post history shows that you were waiting to buy at $1 per BTC because you felt $2 was overvalued.  On a day like today with the market in turmoil you decided not to buy despite your interest in the technology.  

In spite of this epic crash, the bitcoin community continued to grow through 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2014, advancing cryptocurrency to where it is today.  Although June 9, 2011 would have been the absolute most unlucky day to purchase bitcoin in 2011, if you had purchased all of your bitcoin on this day, your investment would now be up by 1,250%.  If you had purchased at $2 instead of waiting for $1 you'd be up by 18,500%

It is the community of users that gives bitcoin its value.  If we keep finding new ways to use bitcoin, the rest will take care of itself.
  

https://i.imgur.com/ktUvPjh.gif

That exact time period was also the first huge wave of negative trolls who were obviously trying to harm BTC.

Uh huh.

Devs can push an update out that changes anything they want. As long as 1 or 2 of the biggest mining "guilds" accepts the change, gg no re.

BTC isn't anonymous. Hate to break it to ya rofl... PUBLIC LEDGER ring any bells?

There are no promises here, but there are in ponzi schemes. And when ponzi scheme collapses it collapses for good. So far Bitcoin has risen from ashes several times. It's just zero-sum game, like any other stock if you ask me + it has currency properties. Actually complete new kind of good we have here. Bitcoin is opensourced, and if anything is clear by now IT'S NOT A PONZI SCHEME, and you are probably troll.

Bitcoin is definitely and completely anonymous if you use it from the Tor network. Period.

Bitcoin is not a ponzi. Some other alt may be designed that way. But as the first btc had a fair launch

To uneducated eyes, who don't know what a Ponzi scheme actually is, yes that's what it might look like.

But it's not.

That's what you think...
 
I wish it was the reality.

Yawn.  

Every time the price drops, posts like these start appearing by the dozens.  Every time it rises they disappear again.

If you are going to make a case for Bitcoin being a Ponzi scheme, then at least base it on arguments about Bitcoin's principle. Don't base it on Bitcoin's price.  Otherwise the discussion is just about as interesting as a discussion about the weather.

annnd its sunny in here :)

...looking like a sophisticated ponzi scheme?
So sophisticated that it's not even a Ponzi?  :D

OP is an anti-bitcoin troll. You all fell for it again, in another one of his threads, hook line and sinker.

Just read his comments from other threads. I have no idea WTF he's doing on this forum.

I didn't read the whole thread, but that made me just lol.

BTC is as much supply & demand as Soybeans with a lot of Manipulation from big Players, also the same as Soybeans.
The Problem about BTC is, that a lot of People just don't understand how actuall markets work and don't get, that most things they criticize about BTC are already in this "real" markets.

true that, in the end there is always 3-4 guys making the calls before everyone follows. thats just how economics works: full stock = full power ^^

Ponzi were scam because people had no idea how it really works.

Everyone knows how bitcoin works.

Yah ...same for USD, JPY and other FIATs ;)

The point is valuation. When Satoshi owned 1m+ coins and none used it ...it could not even buy a single pizza. He had to distribute it to become a millionaire ...value works like this.

Now u call it a Ponzi ...its uR take

correct,
government currencies are legalized theft of the those at the bottom to benefit those at the top VIA inflation and manipulated interest rates to benefit early users of money created by bond sales. Thats technically a pyramid scheme not ponzi. Social Security would be a better example of a ponzi scheme.

Bitcoin is closest to a pump and dump, but only because its highly restricted since it has to interact with the outdated financial system which has loads of laws and regulations. This forces so much rise and fall because of governments changing the rules of their system as they go.

Once you have bitcoin and trade/buy things with bitcoin you remove all the costs that are associated with transactions; however the cost of interacting with banks will always be there so bitcoin will never truly be what it is intended to be until all fiat currency dies. (which will never happen)

limited understanding = must label it something  ::)

Is this guy boring you?  Why don't you come talk to me instead. I'm from a different planet.   ;D

To quote Satoshi:

"something something something, OP doesn't get it, something, something, we don't have *explicative* time to hand hold him through an explanation, for the millionth time." - Satoshi

Exactly this. You could even go as far to say that life is a Ponzi: you work hard and contribute to the economy, you then reap the rewards in retirement providing that the next generation has also been contributing to their pension plans

Can't be a Ponzi scheme without a Madoff!

Dorian can't even afford lunch!

http://s.quickmeme.com/img/12/120ac708a3289c04c93494fb00acc1ec7047b99f1935496f74d5f28d1ce01c60.jpg

Anyone giving your ponzi coins to me ?
I take em all.

Lol this old man.

I've posted this before but ill post it here.

Ponzi scheme - A central actor (person or 'company') receives money with a promise of quick and significant returns. All people that buy into the scheme interact directly with the central actor who pays out money he has received from 'investors' as returns in order to drum up more investment in a fictitious investment opportunity. It is by design centralized, non-transparent and has a hierarchy of 2 levels - CEO of ponzi and everyone else. The investors do not realize they are being payed out with their own and others principle investments.

    O      O       O
     \      |      /
O - (CEO of ponzi) - O
    /       |      \
 O         O        O


Pyramid scheme - A central actor encourages a number of other actors to invest in something in return for something of little to no real world value in a fixed hierarchy on a promise of a) high profit margins on a cheap product and b) getting more new actors into the hierarchy directly underneath you feeding your personal revenue stream (and by design, those directly above you). This structure allows large profits to flow up the streams towards the tip of the hierarchy. A pyramid scheme by design is centralized and non-transparent in nature. People lower down are often not allowed to know exactly how far down they are in the pyramid, only seeing those they directly interact with.


        (CEO of MLM)
          /      |       \
       O       O       O
      / | \   / | \     / | \
   O  O  OO O O O  O O


Bitcoin - Every bitcoin is worth the same so every actor benefits proportionally with the growth of the network. Note that with a pyramid scheme the goods you purchase either have little utility like a poor quality 'how to' guide or a good whose market value is vastly lower than what you just paid to purchase it ($600 for 24 energy drinks). With bitcoin wealth is being traded 1:1. If you buy a bitcoin at a market price of $600, that is what it is worth at that moment and neither party can be said to have 'lost any wealth'. There is nothing stopping you from turning around and selling it right back to the market for market price, just like gold or an antique vase. Bitcoin has a flat hierarchy with no central authority and is transparent.


   O - O       O
    \    \       /
 O-O   O - O
     \   /      \
      O         O - O  

The scam Bitcoin is closest to in nature is a pump and dump, but what separates it from a penny stock P&D is transparency. Because the bitcoin landscape is transparent (open source software, the blockchain etc), it's utility is transparent. The pump of a penny stock is dependent on misinformation and opacity.

What confuses people is the exponential growth and the religious zeal of some bitcoiners giving the impression it is a get rich quick scheme.

This is good stuff.  I have to disagree with the point about transparency.  Yes the blockchain is transparent but so are the 10-Ks of penny stocks.

The reason why BTC looks like a penny stock pump & dump because the early buyers are pumping the stock so they can unload their shares.  The similarity to a penny stock pump & dump is that the marketing doesn't show risk/reward analysis only reward.  Penny stock pumpers usually say things like "no way this goes lower", "it's only 25c per share, will go to $10", "to da moon", etc...

Great post Solomon.

The smart ones would be buying now

That's similar argument to Google or Facebook stock.  The technology to search or do social media has been duplicated 1000 fold yet these two companies seem to retain leadership in their niche.  Why?  Because it's an adopted standard.  Nobody wants to switch email to some new startup Search engine that supposed to find things better than Google.  Nobody wants to be on a better social media that is 10x better and feature rich than Facebook, because all their friends and family are on Facebook.  Vendors don't want to accept non-Bitcoin cyrptocurrencies because crypto ATMs, mainstream businesses, and underground markets have accepted no other cryptos as a standard currency.

Fact: Satoshi is (probably) mega-rich.
Question: Are we going to let him get away with his "crimes".

http://nyoobserver.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/satoshi-nakamoto-comic.png

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=553510.msg6072478#msg6072478

  I also mentioned transparency as the essential quality that makes bitcoin not a ponzi.

  Reading this thread has got me thinking about pyramid scheme too. While bitcoin has the quality of a pyramid scheme in that it rewards the first people who get into it more than the later people, it also offers fundamental utility in the form of the most profound financial innovation that has taken place in years, maybe even centuries.

    This is a pretty big difference- it basically means that bitcoin has all the strengths of the pyramid scheme, plus a ton more. The difference between a pure pump and dump penny stock and a penny stock of a company that actually has an incredible new technology that they need to get funded is also a big difference.


   

Of course it is one.  Likewise, human beings are animals, and lotuses are plants.  Just so happens that this one has a bunch of other characteristics that make it exceptionally useful for other things, like replacing the even-more-parasitic banking system.  Faced with a choice between partaking in a ponzi system and a future of humanity looking like a bank-purchased boot stamping on humanity's face forever, I'll choose the former.

OP should stop measuring the value using fiat money (since it is created out of nothing, it should worth nothing), bitcoin's value measured by fiat money is meaningless. Fiat money is the biggest Ponzi scheme, but since everyone is in this scheme, it works well: You can always dump worthless fiat money to the next guy and he will accept them happily, because he can dump them anytime to the next guy

Another thing: It seems that the shoes you bought with fiat money kept their price relatively stable, but this is because both shoes and fiat money are losing value quickly together (due to more and more production of both of them)

So already in your second post you've conceded that the premise of your thread is flawed and your thread is completely useless. If you had any self-respect you would delete it.

yup it's magic..

http://25.media.tumblr.com/a0aa89c08f03f3d5055858931e21b5aa/tumblr_mp5xce0tZH1r0xo28o2_250.gif

   I guess civilization could be considered a ponzi scheme- Rome had to keep expanding to maintain its structure, and after it couldn't expand anymore due to internal factors it kind of fell apart.

The more you try to deny it, the more BTC looks like a Ponzi.   :D
// Just kidding

Here is a long, detailed rebuttal to the Ponzi claims:
John Bush of SovereignBTC Refutes Mike Adams Bitcoin Hit Piece

As bitcoin exchange MtGox collapses, man who predicted the crash implores bitcoin holders to stop being suckered into a digital Ponzi scheme...
http://www.sovereignbtc.com/john-bush-of-sovereignbtc-refutes-mike-adams-bitcoin-hit-piece



A Ponzi scheme is an investment fraud that involves the payment of purported returns to existing investors from funds contributed by new investors.