Is Bitcoin a Pyramid or Ponzi scheme & what are the ramifications?

[AnonyMint]

Actually my closest confidant on all matters I write about here is a very very rational and high IQ female. So I should qualify my statement by saying not all females. But my confidant is exceptionally rare.

I am not putting down women. I love seeing them happy doing what feels most natural to them. And those like my confidant who are capable of strategic thought with me, wow I am grateful to God for such diversity.

What I resent is this feminism and socialism that tells us everything is fair. Bullshit. Everything is a competition. Even women are competing for what they want, it just so happens their priorities are more in the home+locale realm usually, but not all of course.

Of course you are not putting women down.  Why should they trouble their pretty little heads with such nonsense as Bitcoin when they could be working on a production line sewing clothes for us real men?

 

Sorry if it makes you angry but women are not capable of the same achievements as men. Period. They prefer jobs that are planned out, very few can burn creative and strategic roads as well as men can. Some can. The CEO of Yahoo comes to mind as well as Barbara Liskov for the Liskov Substitution Principle, which is fundamental to all computer languages.

I  am  not proposing women sew all day in sweat shops, we can make robots for that now I hope.

I'd rather see her doing what ever she is happy doing, without you bastards (and your mass media mind programming) trying to tell her she has to be a man. Let her choose for herself.

[Hawker]

Actually my closest confidant on all matters I write about here is a very very rational and high IQ female. So I should qualify my statement by saying not all females. But my confidant is exceptionally rare.

I am not putting down women. I love seeing them happy doing what feels most natural to them. And those like my confidant who are capable of strategic thought with me, wow I am grateful to God for such diversity.

What I resent is this feminism and socialism that tells us everything is fair. Bullshit. Everything is a competition. Even women are competing for what they want, it just so happens their priorities are more in the home+locale realm usually, but not all of course.

Of course you are not putting women down.  Why should they trouble their pretty little heads with such nonsense as Bitcoin when they could be working on a production line sewing clothes for us real men?

 

Sorry if it makes you angry but women are not capable of the same achievements as men. Period. They prefer jobs that are planned out, very few can burn creative and strategic roads as well as men can. Some can. The CEO of Yahoo comes to mind as well as Barbara Liskov for the Liskov Substitution Principle, which is fundamental to all computer languages.

I  am  not proposing women sew all day in sweat shops, we can make robots for that now I hope.

I'd rather see her doing what ever she is happy doing, without you bastards (and your mass media mind programming) trying to tell her she has to be a man. Let her choose for herself.

Well now we know how you see women I can't wait to hear your views on Jews and Blacks. 

[2017orso]

Can people please, please stop encouraging this guy and feeding his need to muddy the forum.  It's not intelligent, it's not insightful, it's dribble, babble, nonsense.

[AnonyMint]

Actually my closest confidant on all matters I write about here is a very very rational and high IQ female. So I should qualify my statement by saying not all females. But my confidant is exceptionally rare.

I am not putting down women. I love seeing them happy doing what feels most natural to them. And those like my confidant who are capable of strategic thought with me, wow I am grateful to God for such diversity.

What I resent is this feminism and socialism that tells us everything is fair. Bullshit. Everything is a competition. Even women are competing for what they want, it just so happens their priorities are more in the home+locale realm usually, but not all of course.

Of course you are not putting women down.  Why should they trouble their pretty little heads with such nonsense as Bitcoin when they could be working on a production line sewing clothes for us real men?

 

Sorry if it makes you angry but women are not capable of the same achievements as men. Period. They prefer jobs that are planned out, very few can burn creative and strategic roads as well as men can. Some can. The CEO of Yahoo comes to mind as well as Barbara Liskov for the Liskov Substitution Principle, which is fundamental to all computer languages.

I  am  not proposing women sew all day in sweat shops, we can make robots for that now I hope.

I'd rather see her doing what ever she is happy doing, without you bastards (and your mass media mind programming) trying to tell her she has to be a man. Let her choose for herself.

Well now we know how you see women I can't wait to hear your views on Jews and Blacks. 

Ashkenazi Jews have a higher average IQ than even Germans. Blacks have the lowest average IQ. There are many smart blacks and many dumb Jews.

Other than that I couldn't say much except to know each as a person.

I suppose I could describe different physical traits of blacks.

[Hawker]

Can people please, please stop encouraging this guy and feeding his need to muddy the forum.  It's not intelligent, it's not insightful, it's dribble, babble, nonsense.

Fair point.

I'm out.  Anonymint is on my ignore list.

[AnonyMint]

Can people please, please stop encouraging this guy and feeding his need to muddy the forum.  It's not intelligent, it's not insightful, it's dribble, babble, nonsense.

Fair point.

I'm out.  Anonymint is on my ignore list.

Socialists must stick together and copy each other like mindless drones for alone and independent they are weak and incapable.

[BitchicksHusband]

Can people please, please stop encouraging this guy and feeding his need to muddy the forum.  It's not intelligent, it's not insightful, it's dribble, babble, nonsense.

Fair point.

I'm out.  Anonymint is on my ignore list.

He still takes up a ton of space even on my ignore list.  He sounds like a friend of mine when he's off his meds.

[An amorous cow-herder]

If we agree with this, we can ask ourselves if Bitcoin falls in one of those categories :
1. Ponzi scheme
2. Pyramid scheme
3. Economic bubble

I say 3. For the following reason:
Bitcoin is not generating enough revenue as a service. The bitcoin network is basicly a transaction service and bitcoins themselves transaction tokens.
Currently most of the income for miners is generated via block rewards and not via transaction fees.
I would feel far more comfortable if the bitcoins were still valued at $10 and 1.5k BTC paid out to miners for transaction fees. While that would mean basicly the same income for a miner it would mean bitcoin were actually damn usefull as a transaction service. On the other hand that would mean shifting like 750k worth of bitcoins per block assuming a 0.2% transaction fee, or at $10, some $7.5M worth of transactions per block (or $45M+ per hour, $1B per day or $30B per month).
Yeah, thats a lot, but basicly that has to be the current goal to sustain the network since that would generate about the same mining income in fiat currency as is currently achieved via block rewards.
Feel free to recalculate with different numbers for e.g. transaction fees, but since block rewards arent given out indefinately the transition to income via transaction fees has to happen sometime.

[Hawker]

If we agree with this, we can ask ourselves if Bitcoin falls in one of those categories :
1. Ponzi scheme
2. Pyramid scheme
3. Economic bubble

I say 3. For the following reason:
Bitcoin is not generating enough revenue as a service. The bitcoin network is basicly a transaction service and bitcoins themselves transaction tokens.
Currently most of the income for miners is generated via block rewards and not via transaction fees.
I would feel far more comfortable if the bitcoins were still valued at $10 and 1.5k BTC paid out to miners for transaction fees. While that would mean basicly the same income for a miner it would mean bitcoin were actually damn usefull as a transaction service. On the other hand that would mean shifting like 750k worth of bitcoins per block assuming a 0.2% transaction fee, or at $10, some $7.5M worth of transactions per block (or $45M+ per hour, $1B per day or $30B per month).
Yeah, thats a lot, but basicly that has to be the current goal to sustain the network since that would generate about the same mining income in fiat currency as is currently achieved via block rewards.
Feel free to recalculate with different numbers for e.g. transaction fees, but since block rewards arent given out indefinately the transition to income via transaction fees has to happen sometime.

The price is not related to the present value of bitcoin.  Its related to the assumption that at some future date, adoption will be enough that the price is justified by scarcity.  Even if the only use of Bitcoin is for illegal drugs, that market is huge and won't go away and buying online is the safest and easiest way to do it.  That market alone will push the Bitcoin value significantly higher.

I've just bought a KnC KnCMiner Bitcoin Miner ASIC Jupiter so feeling pretty bullish about Bitcoin right now.

[An amorous cow-herder]

The price is not related to the present value of bitcoin.  Its related to the assumption that at some future date, adoption will be enough that the price is justified by scarcity.

Same way as i see it, basicly. No different than shares in e.g. Twitter, fueled by hope for growth. But the transaction amount *has* to grow a *lot* to sustain long term surviveability.
Possible? Sure, Paypal was already moving $315M worth of transactions per day in 2011.

[2017orso]

The expectation is that it will grow a lot.

[AnonyMint]

I've just bought a KnC KnCMiner Bitcoin Miner ASIC Jupiter so feeling pretty bullish about Bitcoin right now.

So now we know your vested interests and why you were not being objective.

That is what I assumed.

[mootinator]

AM, you misunderstand the greater fool theory.

The greater fool theory justifies overpaying for something I don't have confidence in, on the assumption some idiot will come along and pay more for it. As such, if I say to you, "I'm speculatively buying bitcoins because I think they are at least as valuable as the current spot price and will be worth more in the future" you're just going to have to take my word that I'd genuinely rather have a bitcoin than whatever value near $500 they're currently trading at.

Value is a subjective judgment. I cannot prove to you that bitcoin's value is greater or equal to the current spot price any more than you can prove to me that bitcoin's value is objectively zero. Arguing with someone that something they own and feel has intrinsic value doesn't have intrinsic value is a pointless exercise in futility. If something doesn't appear to have any intrinsic value to you, congratulations, stay out of the market for those things.

[AnonyMint]

What I resent is this feminism and socialism that tells us everything is fair. Bullshit. Everything is a competition. Even women are competing for what they want, it just so happens their priorities are more in the home+locale realm usually, but not all of course.

But the payback is coming 2016ish. Western civilization will collapse.

Over-generalising/ black-or-white thinking... attempting to predict the a distant future...

Noobie mistakes. Your knowledge gaps are showing.

So we wager a bet?

I will be sleeping. Reply and I will deal with you when I awake.

[porcupine87]

Yes he deleted my post, too, when I asked him to name one Ponzi schema, which is transparent like Bitcoin. Everybody can see the source code and can imagine where the higher price comes from. And there is no company or person behind Bitcoin, because Bitcoin is a protocoll.

Sure he sould not name one, so he has to delete such uncomftable questions...

[An amorous cow-herder]

I mean, it was just too obvious AM was trolling.
Geez, advocating a CPU-only altcoin as an alternative. Sure, and just how exactly do you want to regulate that? You can burn any algorithm you can run on a general purpose processor onto a dedicated chip.

[AnonyMint]

What I resent is this feminism and socialism that tells us everything is fair. Bullshit. Everything is a competition. Even women are competing for what they want, it just so happens their priorities are more in the home+locale realm usually, but not all of course.

But the payback is coming 2016ish. Western civilization will collapse.

Over-generalising/ black-or-white thinking... attempting to predict the a distant future...

Noobie mistakes. Your knowledge gaps are showing.

So we wager a bet?

I will be sleeping. Reply and I will deal with you when I awake.

A bet about what? And, no.

That is what I thought, just like your username blablahblah.

But to elaborate on my point slightly:
Some things aren't a competition. So your first point is just plain wrong. You could argue that 'everything' is reducible to some competition for resources (e.g.: neural networks getting rewarded with more energy if they solve some problem), but that would make you a closet materialist who believes causality trumps free will. Consistency, Mr Anarchist!

You could well be correct on the second point, but since you're a big fan of chaos, you should know that predicting the weather more than a week ahead is a nightmare with all those terrorist butterflies all trying to 'predict' hurricanes!

There is one unarguable truth here, eventually collectivists run out of other peoples' money.

And that is more or less 2016ish. Certainly no later than 2020, western civilization will be in shambles.

Hawker's morals will go right out the window, when butt hurt changes to stomach empty.

[AnonyMint]

Calling bitcoin a ponzi is soooo 2010.  

Like totally chill out with me dude. Have another hit on the bong wookie.

[AnonyMint]

Yes he deleted my post, too, when I asked him to name one Ponzi schema, which is transparent like Bitcoin.

I wasn't going to participate in his strawman non-argumentation, since Bitcoin is not transparent.

And also this:

Not. Because you continue to blithe-fully ignore systemic effects.

No where do I see any dot.com stock professing valuations based on all 7 billion people one day buying in because it is a currency.

Currency is a very powerful implied con. It implies power far beyond any stock exchange, much less individual stock.

It does not matter whether we are talking about Internet stocks with currently negative earnings, tulip bulbs, shares of the Blockchain pie, or something "completely useless" such as modern art. The fact is that people are (in most jurisdictions) free to invent, produce and sell things for whatever price they can gouge in a voluntary market. Also buying at inflated prices is not criminalized.

And none of those do we claim the economy-of-scale of the whole globe in one investment.

I strongly suggest you read Nicolas Taleb's new bestseller Antifragility.

The strongest characteristic of a ponzi scheme is the massive destruction it causes because the players don't see the systemic risk of pooling themselves. They are blinded to it by a mania.

And that is exactly what we have here today with Bitcoin.

It has to be noted that this kind of speculative bubbles are almost completely harmless.

Ha! You ignore systemic risk like any good collectivist does.

If the product does not have intrinsic value, its production does not burden the real economy.

Bring all the world's money into one investment, then tell me how can the world function when that investment is not a currency.

bitcoins will always have a price

You don't seem to understand that if you tie 7 billion people's shoelaces together they now walk as one.

Penny or nanopenny makes no difference. What matters is the relative potential energy outside the single TITANIC THING.

D) It seems that the crux of the matter is, whether Bitcoin/bitcoins have intrinsic value as a currency/money or not. If not, it has been a recurring fad over several years and numerous bubbles, which have repeatedly risen higher and higher. In fact, the numbers we are seeing in the exchanges testify that every day until this week has been a bear trap.

How you relate speculation to transaction volume by value is beyond me.  

[AnonyMint]

I mean, it was just too obvious AM was trolling.
Geez, advocating a CPU-only altcoin as an alternative. Sure, and just how exactly do you want to regulate that? You can burn any algorithm you can run on a general purpose processor onto a dedicated chip.

That incorrect assumption is why I am a world-class programmer and you are not.