I expected that you would come up with something along these lines

Not you personally of course but you as anyone supporting your point collectively. That's why I said beforehand that it depends on your point of view. But there's even more to my point than you probably think (read, it is more substantiated than it appears at first glance). You say that under my definition, gold and fine art could be considered Ponzi schemes as well. But this is a wrong assumption, and here's the distinction which allows to clearly and reliably separate the wheat from the chaff, so to speak

Both gold and fine arts have wide uses outside speculation. Put differently, it is far from the pristine "buy low, sell high" paradigm. More than 50% of gold is used as jewelry which has little to do with speculation. Jewelry is not bought with the goal of selling it later, so in this way it is a type of final goods. The same with fine arts. Collectors are looking into their art value, while their speculative value only coming from this worth. This is not the case with Bitcoin which is thoroughly speculative and mostly used with that paradigm in mind (read, speculation)

Litecoin halving had turned out a disaster indeed

But it was a disaster specifically because Bitcoin was going down. If Bitcoin had been going up when the Litecoin halving came along, we would have seen Litecoin prices skyrocket. However, there is no Bitcoin for Bitcoin as there is Bitcoin for Litecoin to arrest its rise despite the halving. The point is, while we shouldn't in fact expect too much from the coming halving but definitely not for the reasons why the Litecoin halving has failed

Все будет зависит от того, сколько тезеров к халвингу напечатают

Если тезеры печатать не будут (или будут, но мало), на халвинг битка может пройти и вовсе незамеченным. Награда, конечно, уполовинится, но сколько той награды в текущем предложении монет на рынке? Я думаю, что мизер. Ну да, будет какой-то одномоментный хайп (ну пусть будет в пике до 13-15к, что тоже неплохо, если кому надо слиться), но без станка (печатного, который у Феникса) хайп быстро кончится, если вообще начнется. Потому и нужен тезер, в достойных объемах

Здесь есть один нюанс

Даже можно сказать, своего рода парадокс. А суть его заключается в следующем. Возможность манипулирования рынком зависит от его ликвидности (при прочих равных условиях, разумеется), т.е. чем меньше ликвидность, тем проще им манипулировать (и, соответственно, наоборот). Однако это палка о двух концах, как, впрочем, и любая другая палка (ну кроме палки Мебиуса, конечно, которая обруч)

Это означает, что хотя у нас и появляются возможности для манипулирования ценой при снижении ликвидности, выхлоп от этого тоже уменьшается соответствующим образом, как раз таки из-за снижения этой самой ликвидности. Действительно, какой смысл играться ценой, если заработать с этого можно только копейки? Вот напечатать пару миллиардов тезеров и забить этой ликвидностью рынок - это совсем другое дело

Well, that actually depends on your point of view

If we assume that the defining criterion of a Ponzi scheme is paying profits to earlier investors with the funds obtained from more recent investors (as per Wikipedia, no plagiarism intended), Bitcoin fits this definition pretty well, at least as far as its speculative part is concerned (which is the best part of it anyway). You can only earn dough by buying coins at a lower price and then dumping them on someone else at a higher price

But before we already got addicted, we can't know if we will

The meaning is that as far as controlling our actions and behavior is concerned, we should avoid gambling altogether (if we don't want to find out). To put it differently, if we started to gamble and have a propensity and natural tendency to turn into a gambling addict sooner or later, it can be too late to try to exert that control. On the other hand, if we are not to become a compulsive gambler, what is to control here as we are already always in control by default?

But that proves the reverse of what you are trying to convey

If some shitcoin is going to kick the bucket eventually, holding it would be an exercise in stupidity and futility. The trader would get rid of such a coin as soon as he has seen the writing on the wall. The holder, on the other hand, will keep it despite all the warning signs. I don't how it can possibly be construed as long-term "investors" (as you call them) laughing at this whole situation. They must have a surreal sense of humor then, I should admit

How's artificial scarcity any different from any other scarcity?

Regardless, if we follow your logic through (or whoever you took this idea from), then any money is "a Keynesian scam by default" for the simple reason money could function as money only if it is a store of value. When money loses such capacity, it stops being money (as the example of the Zimbabwean dollar has clearly shown). But being a store of value necessarily requires being scarce, as something abundant cannot be a store of value simply because it doesn't have any market value (read, there is nothing to store)

They couldn't care less

They care about only their own skin in the game (read, their profits). If you decide to publish your code and it is really worth it so that many casinos have to ban such smart users (read, ruin their reputation), they still wouldn't give a slightest fuck about that. The reason is quite simple. They are already doing all that nasty stuff you mention anyway (exploit of a bug, abuse of something, not complying to T&C, refusing to KYC, or anything to that tune) and for just lucky users who chanced to win big, not someone making use of the martingale system in a really smart way

You can't force people to do anything

As long as it is economically rational to use Bitcoin for speculation (one group of Bitcoin users) and holding for future gains (so-called holders), there won't be any change. People are financially discouraged from spending bitcoins, while they prefer to spend fiat instead. This is a rational choice, and you can't change it

This effect has been known since ancient times and later became known as Gresham's law. Some people may be willing to spend their coins simply because their only source of income is cryptocurrencies, and they don't have access to fiat. But they don't make up the majority of Bitcoin users anyway, and thus can be discarded

And where's Pandora's box here?

The US trade deficit is covered by the "export" of American dollars. Technically, it should be covered by the dollar inflation which would balance out the differences between imports and exports but since the dollars which make this difference never make back to the US, we can safely assume that these dollars are just another entry in the trade balance of the United States. Simply put, Uncle Sam is exporting his dollars

Well, it's not quite how it works in today's world

As in today's world most money is created by commercial banks through credit. It is actually a fascinating system as money gets created when the economy most needs it ("for needs related to business transactions") as well as destroyed as soon as the latter doesn't need it any more. Indeed, the central bank still plays a significant role in this process, but it only interferes if the system gets out of balance and can't readjust itself on its own

If the bot queries the forum before midnight its time, i.e. before 9:00 PM forum time, your posts made after 7 PM will be counted for today. It just happens that the bot doesn't retrieve the post counts within this period but personally, I wouldn't count on this (pardon the pun)

Calculating correctly the bot's timezone does the trick, though

A small manual how to get all your posts counted by the Yobit counting bot

As I have explained, the Yobit bot seems to be internally using UTC+3 timezone. It means that its clock is 3 hours ahead of the forum time. For example, right now it's 2:03 PM forum time, but it is already 5:03 PM according to the timezone of the bot. Why is it important? It is important because if you make posts after 9:00 PM forum time, your posts will be counted for the next day. Ultimately, what matters here is the timezone of the bot and when exactly it queries the forum - before or after its midnight

To check this, I made 3 posts yesterday, which was actually already past midnight today for me as my local timezone matches the bot's:

This is my first post at 09:03:15 PM forum time yesterday
This is my second post at 10:00:51 PM forum time yesterday
This is my third post at 10:43:14 PM forum time yesterday

When I woke up early today, which was about 5 AM forum time, I had already 3 posts counted. Then I wrote another 2 posts at 10:31:38 AM and 11:08:56 AM forum time (this and this posts), and now I have all 5 posts added to the list:



The bottom line is that if you want the bot to count all your posts for the current day, try making them after 9:00 PM the day before and early in the day this day

I somewhat disagree with this opinion

As you further note in your post, the main difference lies in the volatility part. Any you are right since it is the exact reason why you think there's no correlation between Bitcoin and the stock market. Simply put, Bitcoin's volatility is hiding this correlation, but you can be damn sure it is still there (only gold and other precious metals are negatively correlated to regular stocks in a genuine way)

Bitcoin is a highly speculative asset, and it is the same speculative money that gets poured into stocks and cryptocurrencies alike (with more emphasis on the speculative part in case of crypto). So, as far as major trends and market shifts are concerned (think financial crisis here), I for one expect Bitcoin as well as other cryptocurrencies to behave in a pretty predictable way (read, they will crash along with the stock market)

You apparently refer to Bitcoin

But there's no direct reference or mention of it in the OP (yes, I checked). So while Bitcoin holders may not be idiots after all, given that most altcoins are left for dead by now, OP may not be wrong at all either, generally speaking, and not just about crypto (as jumping off in time is as important as jumping in). Although it largely depends on your specific entry point, there is a greater difference (in absolute terms) between today's price and the ATH of 2017, on the one hand, and today's price and the price when this thread was started, on the other

Such thinking is pretty useless if you ask me

If the sun were to blow up tomorrow, we wouldn't be able to do anything about it today (other than praying), right? So what's the point of discussing it other than for personal amusement (whatever would be left in such dire circumstances)? If there is a nuclear problem (like in a nuclear holocaust), cryptocurrencies will likely be the last thing we would or should care about as it will all come down to a question of mere survival of the whole humankind. The point is, we don't need to go to these issues when we are discussing just cryptocurrencies

Ценник всей крипты завязан на биток в долгосроке

Разве только за исключением догов. Хотя и доги тоже завязаны на биток в долгосроке. Я это к тому, что халвинг лайта (точнее, движняк из-за халвинга) закончился даже толком не успев начаться по той простой причине, что Биткоин полетел вниз стремительным домкратом. Если бы последний рос, а не падал, то лайт бы пер вверх с удвоенной силой, в том числе и в связи с хайпом, который бы раздули после халвинга

Ну а что касается собственно битка и уже его халвинга в мае следующего года, то нужно понимать, что от собственно халвинга практически ничего в настоящее не зависит, ибо сокращение награды мало влияет на изменение предложения монет на рынке. Другими словами, рост ценника до или после халвинга возможен только за счета хайпа (ну или если бешеный принтер тезеров запустят)

With cryptocurrencies we are simply back to square one, or back to the roots if you like it more this way

I mean we have been on fiat only for a very small amount of time if we compare this period with the amount of time we have not been on fiat. More specifically, fiat, in its present form, came about only a few decades ago, and before that, which had been for quite a few millinea (feel the difference), we were on precious metals as money (since pharaohs, to be exact). And you know what? The government had to live with that somehow

It could debase its official gold or silver coin as much as it pleased, which it in fact habitually did since Ancient Greeks and Romans (and probably pharaohs too), but it couldn't debase the metals themselves, their worthiness and value as such. It is only for the last 40 years that gold lost some of its shine and appeal. But now we have Bitcoin which is going to shine as bright and appeal as strong (with gold as a backup option, indeed)

And what's the bottom line, huh?

Right, we should stay below their radar at all times, and that would probably mean spreading our operation across a few "trusted" casinos. In this way, we could squeeze the maximum amount of profits without attracting too much attention lest we get kicked out. I would consider it an entirely new level at building our gambling empire. Now that we have beaten the house, it's time to beat the entire gambling industry