Jorge, by the look of your Twitter account you seem fairly obsessed with demonizing Bitcoin and diminishing those involved. Charming. You seem to be relishing the price drop. Is that part of your purely academic reasoning for being here?
"Trading or mining bitcoins produces zero real wealth. Those who made money with it, did so by swindling someone else."
"Anyone who has invested in Bitcoin more than he has got out of it is a sucker,who exchanged something of value for something of no value,"
"The only hope such a sucker has to make up for his loss is to find an even bugger sucker who will buy his coins at a hight enough price."
"As in any Ponzi scheme, the profit of the smart ones who leave the bitcoin system early is the loss of those who remain in it,"
"Bitcoin is now back at ~800 US$. P. T. Barnum was right it seems 8-). Or at least many people believe he his. 8-) 8-)"
"It is just to show that investing in Bitcoin is playing the lottery" (translated)
"it has speculators who try to convince unwary BTC to invest in promising huge profits ..." (translated)
In a couple tweets Stolfi equates Bitcoin with Telexfree, a Brazilian ponzi.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telexfree"É por isso que acho Bitcoin uam Telexfree. Porque dinheiro comum sumiria? Porque *bitcoin* seria única cripto usada?"
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Jorge's plan to make money (a satire on Jorge's view about the Bitcoin ponzi):
http://www.ic.unicamp.br/~stolfi/bitcoin/2014-02-17-HowToMakeSomeEasyMoney.html"I ask ten people to form a circle, each holding a 50 dollar bill. I tell each person to pass his bill to the next guy at his right, slowly at first but gradually quickening.
I show them mathematically that, at any moment, the sum that each one had, plus everything that he received from his Left neighbor, is always more than what he gave to his Right neighbor; so that everybody will win in the end.
I give the example by taking the bill from my Left neighbor and giving it to my Right neighbor, "like this, see." Soon the eleven of us are smoothly passing the ten bills around.
A passer-by asks, "may I join too?" "Sure, get a 50 dollar bill and enter the circle." "If I contribute two bills, will I get twice the profit?" "Of course!" He calls two of his friends, who call others, and so on.
Soon we are twenty-one people circulating thirty bills. Everybody notices that the method is working: each one now must grab another bill from Left before he has a chance to give his bill to Right.
A few minutes later, I stop for a moment to pick up the pen that I dropped on the floor. While doing so I discreetly pocket the bill that Left just handed me, and I immediately resume the play. With the bills in motion, no one can count them and notice that now there are only twenty nine going around.
No, wait, that guy across the circle is angrily staring at my pocket, he noticed my trick! I am done! But, instead of blowing the whistle, the scoundrel winks at me, pauses for a moment to blow his nose, discreetly pockets the bill from Left too, and goes on playing. Phew!
But I'd better play safe. I tell everybody, "sorry folks, I must pick up my turtle at the gym, you carry on without me." And I walk out holding high "my" bill, that I just got from Left. That scoundrel does the same. The other nineteeen guys thank me for the great opportunity and keep on passing the remaining twenty-six bills around, already thinking on how they will spend their profit."
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