re: #78 Nerdy Fish

Bitcoin is a Ponzi scheme, designed to benefit the early adopters at the expense of people who are late to the game. While you’re correct in that its design makes it resistant to manipulation, it’s just as much a scam as the other cryptocurrencies. It wasn’t until after Bitcoin was out in the world that the techbros realized they could simplify their scams by making unstable coins that they could mint at will and rubes would buy just to be “hip.”

Not a Ponzi in the classical Ponzi sense. It’s something else. I think that it will likely crash and burn. It can be useful as a medium of exchange in places that don’t have a robust banking system, or for sending money to places not serviced by PayPal and such. In a Ponzi scheme, the people on top get paid from deposits/investments made by people who come in later, not from returns of the business. That’s not what’s happening with Bitcoin. It’s more analogous to a stock that doesn’t pay dividends or to land ownership. Unless you consider those Ponzi schemes. Unlike an IPO/ICO, Bitcoin didn’t have a pre-mint.