What is your answer to "Bitcoin is a Ponzi Scheme" ?

[tvbcof]

"At some level almost everything is a like a 'Ponzi Scheme' in that they derive value from new input.  Bitcoin valuations could still be reaching a point which represents their potential utility.  Impossible to know at this point."

[Prolifik]

Bitcoin is almost a full fledged super-currency not a ponzi scheme. Facebook would be considered a ponzi scheme if looked at in the same way, actually more so because facebook stocks were initially closed to the public. Whereas anyone could purchase bitcoin on day 1. Alot of people have made a killing on bitcoin and anyone could have gotten in. Ponzi schemes are unfair and rigged. Bitcoin is open to the public and fair for everyone.

Hopefully you understand what I'm trying to say. I'm not exactly collage graduate material.

When businesses can run on nothing but Bitcoin it will be a full fledged currency.

By that I mean pay all expenses like employees wages, taxes, supplies, rent, utilities with bitcoin and accept bitcoin for services.

[BTCisthefuture]

There  is no central authority receiving all the funds and paying people out. Everyone is involved.

You can also see what money is going in and what money is going out,  and money does go out and value goes down as well as it goes up when people buy.  You can see every transaction thats on the blockchain compared to a ponzi scheme where you dont see who's putting in money or where its going.

[Jeezy911]

"You are probably just too stupid to understand it anyway, so yes it's a Ponzi Scheme" I'm done trying to explain it to people, I tried, people don't want to get rich I guess.

[Prolifik]

When a Ponzi scheme is not stopped by the authorities, it sooner or later falls apart for one of the following reasons:[1]
The promoter vanishes.

Satoshi Nakamoto vanished

We are all Satoshi Nakamoto.

[johnyj]

All the fiat money is a Ponzi Scheme, it cost almost nothing to make, and the only way to use them is to find the next guy who accept it, but when everyone has accepted this Ponzi Scheme, it becomes a currency

Bitcoin is not, since it has a cost corresponding to its value

[djarot]

Bitcoin is a Ponzi Scheme? No Way

Ponzi = early "investor" make a profit, new comer get fucked
Bitcoin = early adopter? some a make good profit and some other have a sad story and I think new comer especially bigguys make a lot than early adopter


  

[Nagle]

Bitcoin is not a Ponzi scheme. (Technically, it's a pump and dump.)

Mt. Gox, with all their withdrawal delays, is probably a Ponzi scheme.

[jubalix]

[1] it is, now give me you worthless ponzi BTC....yeah I thought not.

[2] It is but much less of a ponzi scheme than central banking/fractional reserve banking and quantitative easing, which is breaking your back by reducing you to wage slaves at the behest of a few rich banisters, and their hangers on.

[3] Its not read the multitude of reason in this thread.


QED.

[jubalix]

Bitcoin is not a Ponzi scheme. (Technically, it's a pump and dump.)

Mt. Gox, with all their withdrawal delays, is probably a Ponzi scheme.

Gox, is likely a fractional reserve exchange, both for FIAT and BTC by now, having said that the higher highs and lower lows, may allow it to survive indefinitely as a kind of weird hybrid alt GOXBTC/GOXUSD

[zerk89]

You guys clearly all have vested interest in Bitcoin, this is the hornets nest after all. I am heavily invested in Bitcoin, but I see it for what it is.

It is a Pyramid, the price is determined by miners and the mining manufacturers who produce the hardware at a set cost. When you purchase that hardware, that is your "buy-in" price. From the time you purchase that hardware, you are unlikely to see a ROI, unless you are lucky. The Manufacturers mine with your hardware for a few months until ROI is no longer possible and blame it on delays, the Manufacturers then begin producing the next wave of machines with 3-10x the amount of hashing power. For the 90% of people who get their machines and start running into ROI problems, they begin hoarding all the coins they have mined, as if they were to sell them they would be selling at a loss. They hoard them in hopes the price will go up, as the entire network of consumers who does this occurs, there is less Bitcoins on the exchanges for sale. Less demand --> higher prices. All it takes is a wift of good news at these points and you will see the 20-90x increase hills that have happened time and time again. This process usually occurs in 4-8 month periods.

Also, every time a bitcoin is sold on the exchange, that is passing the "floor buy in price" of one coin, or the bags so to speak, this means more hoarders for the market, less supply of Bitcoins for sale, leads to higher demand --> higher prices. People are less likely to sell their coins for less than that price, and tend to wait until they see huge gains afterwards before they are happy enough to sell.

We are on the cusp of the next huge increase in price, it will occur within the next 2-3 months, the manufacturers have mined the crap out of all their pre sales, and have finally began to ship all of their units within the past few weeks give or take (and 90% of them will not see a ROI, go work it out), that is until the price of Bitcoin will go up, which I have no doubt it will.  They have began manufacturing the next wave of high hash rate ASICS that will come onto the network as they come off the production lines, in the next 2-3 months the difficulty will make bitcoin unprofitable, that event will trigger the hoarding, and you will see the price catapult as a result.

People 'buy in' to the idea that the Bitcoin protocol is amazing and will be the future. This is the source of new money coming into the market, however it does not fully determine the price as I explained earlier, you probably only need a fraction of % to maintain that 11 bn market cap. When the institutional funds come online in June/July and come to buy earlier adopters/whales coins, that will be a good thing for the price as there won't be 500million+ $ worth of BTC dumped onto the exchanges when someone decides they want to cash out.

When the dollar was created, it was done the same way Bitcoin was today, the pyramid is on the damn US dollar bill.

After the price surges, a new wave of bagholders comes to the party, looking to get in on it and make a new fortune.

If left unchecked, Bitcoin will swallow up all of the worlds wealth, at that point it will become a world currency, as there will be no need convert it to dollars and back.

If it gets to the point where there is not enough interest and purchase power, then it will collapse at some point in the future, but this is not for a long time, I'd give it at least another 3-5 years of life. It will succeed if it turns out that the powers that be are behind it, if the whole world buys into it, then it will never collapse, and become the world currency, like I said earlier.

This is something the NWO has been pushing for a long time, Bitcoin was created by an NSA scientist.

The clueless regulators are just normal people trying to do their jobs. What better way to push a NWO one world currency than by letting the people do it themselves, over the internet.

It will wipe out all of the worlds debts, and people holding large sums of nations currency will lose out, like China who owns nearly all of USA's debt/$'s.

You don't have to believe my opinion on the NWO theory, but believe that the price is driven by a pyramid.

[Holliday]

You guys clearly all have vested interest in Bitcoin, this is the hornets nest after all. I am heavily invested in Bitcoin, but I see it for what it is.

It is a Pyramid

No, it's not.

A pyramid scheme is an unsustainable business model that involves promising participants payment or services, primarily for enrolling other people into the scheme, rather than supplying any real investment or sale of products or services to the public.

Bitcoin is not unsustainable. It is not a business model. There is no one promising payment or services.

Bitcoin does offer real utility though. It allows users to securely store and transfer value without the help of a middleman or the permission of an authority.

The exchange rate is most certainly not set by the miners. Why wouldn't they just set it to $1,000,000+ each if that were the case? You never even need to involve yourself with mining to be a Bitcoin user. The exchange rate is set by people who are willing to trade other things (usually fiat) for Bitcoins. You can try to sell something all day long for whatever price you want, if you don't have a buyer you can't really claim to have an exchange rate (you can, but it will be an exercise in futility). No one would even be producing mining hardware if there was no prior demand for Bitcoin. I'm not going to bother pointing out any further errors in your post.

[Bagatell]

This is something the NWO has been pushing for a long time, Bitcoin was created by an NSA scientist.

Proof please.

[zerk89]

You guys clearly all have vested interest in Bitcoin, this is the hornets nest after all. I am heavily invested in Bitcoin, but I see it for what it is.

It is a Pyramid

No, it's not.

A pyramid scheme is an unsustainable business model that involves promising participants payment or services, primarily for enrolling other people into the scheme, rather than supplying any real investment or sale of products or services to the public.

Bitcoin is not unsustainable. It is not a business model. There is no one promising payment or services.

Bitcoin does offer real utility though. It allows users to securely store and transfer value without the help of a middleman or the permission of an authority.

The exchange rate is most certainly not set by the miners. Why wouldn't they just set it to $1,000,000+ each if that were the case? You never even need to involve yourself with mining to be a Bitcoin user. The exchange rate is set by people who are willing to trade other things (usually fiat) for Bitcoins. You can try to sell something all day long for whatever price you want, if you don't have a buyer you can't really claim to have an exchange rate (you can, but it will be an exercise in futility). No one would even be producing mining hardware if there was no prior demand for Bitcoin. I'm not going to bother pointing out any further errors in your post.

You are applying it directly to the definition of maybe a wikipedia on pyramid, you take that definition as if it's written in scripture and holy. Bitcoin does not have to be a business model to be a pyramid, no one has to promise payments or services for it to be a pyramid, you couldn't possibly know if Bitcoin is ultimately unsustainable or not. If you for one second took away your biased opinion, and actually read what i wrote earlier you would understand, you are just another cog in the wheel, or should i say block in the pyramid (lol). If it was this easy to conquer the world, because of the lack of IQ points from the masses, i'm going to gladly join the other side and sharpen the axe. Where do i sign up?

This is something the NWO has been pushing for a long time, Bitcoin was created by an NSA scientist.

Proof please.

http://www.informatik.uni-trier.de/~ley/pers/hd/o/Okamoto:Tatsuaki.html

[Bagatell]

This is something the NWO has been pushing for a long time, Bitcoin was created by an NSA scientist.

Proof please.

http://www.informatik.uni-trier.de/~ley/pers/hd/o/Okamoto:Tatsuaki.html

That's conjecture, not proof.

" Why would someone who went to such great lengths to remain anonymous choose a name that is so similar to his real name?"

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=235289.msg2556950#msg2556950

[BlockChainLottery]

You guys clearly all have vested interest in Bitcoin, this is the hornets nest after all. I am heavily invested in Bitcoin, but I see it for what it is.

It is a Pyramid

No, it's not.

A pyramid scheme is an unsustainable business model that involves promising participants payment or services, primarily for enrolling other people into the scheme, rather than supplying any real investment or sale of products or services to the public.

Bitcoin is not unsustainable. It is not a business model. There is no one promising payment or services.

Bitcoin does offer real utility though. It allows users to securely store and transfer value without the help of a middleman or the permission of an authority.

The exchange rate is most certainly not set by the miners. Why wouldn't they just set it to $1,000,000+ each if that were the case? You never even need to involve yourself with mining to be a Bitcoin user. The exchange rate is set by people who are willing to trade other things (usually fiat) for Bitcoins. You can try to sell something all day long for whatever price you want, if you don't have a buyer you can't really claim to have an exchange rate (you can, but it will be an exercise in futility). No one would even be producing mining hardware if there was no prior demand for Bitcoin. I'm not going to bother pointing out any further errors in your post.

You are applying it directly to the definition of maybe a wikipedia on pyramid, you take that definition as if it's written in scripture and holy. Bitcoin does not have to be a business model to be a pyramid, no one has to promise payments or services for it to be a pyramid, you couldn't possibly know if Bitcoin is ultimately unsustainable or not.

But definitions help us to understand things. If you're expanding the definition that much, everything could be called a pyramid. Don't argue on definitions.

 If you for one second took away your biased opinion, and actually read what i wrote earlier you would understand, you are just another cog in the wheel, or should i say block in the pyramid (lol). If it was this easy to conquer the world, because of the lack of IQ points from the masses, i'm going to gladly join the other side and sharpen the axe. Where do i sign up?

Your biased as well, that's inherent to your standpoint. IQ, really? That's just mud-slinging.

[zerk89]

Who wrote the definition? You clearly don't understand what a pyramid is if you have to read what someone edited in on Wikipedia.

[BlockChainLottery]

Who wrote the definition? You clearly don't understand what a pyramid is if you have to read what someone edited in on Wikipedia.

Just don't argue on definitions. Just say what you think a pyramid scheme is and continue the discussion.

Another example about arguing about a definition is what exactly is a continent. Some say there are seven, some say six, some say there are even more.
But it's not really important, just say what you think how many there are. A definition is quite arbitrary.
Watch this and have a laugh.

[BombaUcigasa]

You guys clearly all have vested interest in Bitcoin, this is the hornets nest after all. I am heavily invested in Bitcoin, but I see it for what it is.

It is a Pyramid, the price is determined by miners and the mining manufacturers who produce the hardware at a set cost. When you purchase that hardware, that is your "buy-in" price. From the time you purchase that hardware, you are unlikely to see a ROI, unless you are lucky. The Manufacturers mine with your hardware for a few months until ROI is no longer possible and blame it on delays, the Manufacturers then begin producing the next wave of machines with 3-10x the amount of hashing power. For the 90% of people who get their machines and start running into ROI problems, they begin hoarding all the coins they have mined, as if they were to sell them they would be selling at a loss. They hoard them in hopes the price will go up, as the entire network of consumers who does this occurs, there is less Bitcoins on the exchanges for sale. Less demand --> higher prices. All it takes is a wift of good news at these points and you will see the 20-90x increase hills that have happened time and time again. This process usually occurs in 4-8 month periods.

While this is true, you are forgetting the other angle.

As hardware is very scarce, the demand for good hardware will be high, both from savvy miners that calculate precisely the ROI of a machine and from filthy casuals that click forum/google ads regarding BFL miners with hope to get into the game. This causes the price to be higher than perfect ROI, thus leading to your scenario, but not from the offer's side but from the demand side. Higher price demands more mining and raises difficulty, too high difficulty demands a higher price.

However, once new Bitcoins cost X dollars to make and because miners will raise the floor and acquire the cheaper ones (remember they WANT the actual bitcoins as collectibles, not necessarily to ROI on hardware) the system will mostly grow in size and adoption, the new price of Bitcoin is set in stone slowly by having transactions made on this new price.

Without a technological or infrastructure flaw, or maybe a better replacement with simpler and better design (like Dogecoin) , Bitcoin is still and will be valuable and will have no reason to drop in price until it engulfs sufficient value to replace some currencies. Even if we end up using only Bitcoin, it's relative value will still increase as coins are lost, destroyed or saved for later. Consider for a bit just how cheap Bitcoin will make our financial system. No more banks, safes, coins, bills, stock markets, people to operate them, places to store them, buildings, communications, infrastructure, risk funds. How many resources we can release for other constructive purposes in our society, besides handling our collective effort rewards.

Not a bubble, in the same way as trains, automobiles, radios, televisions and internet connections are not.

[igorr]

Yes, BTC is 100% Ponzi scheme.