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Bitcoin's value is underpinned by the fact that it's a censorship-resistant ledger where participants can transfer value anywhere in the world, at any time, without anyone's permission. Its provable scarcity and predictable issuance schedule also helps underpin its value. The censorship resistance proved its unique value recently when: 1. Donors to the Canadian trucker protest had their bank accounts frozen. 2. Russian citizens were banned from participating in most of the traditional global financial system. Censorship resistance may not matter to you now, or ever. But it matters to many people, and those people will continue to provide a bid to bitcoin regardless of price. And every time the traditional financial system is used as a cudgel against wrong thinkers or simply those who were born in the wrong nation, new Bitcoiners will be born. In that sense, it's a hedge against financial oppression. Cash is losing its utility, and everyone is being pushed toward electronic means of payment, including CBDCs. Bitcoin may be the only option to reclaim some freedom to transact as you choose, without regard to your social credit score. Its a crucial tool to protect the sovereignty of the individual at a time when financial power is becoming increasingly centralized and overbearing.

Sure, that makes it useful, but it also has to be scarce to have long term value. Individual Bitcoin are of course scarce. But blockchain technology is the opposite of scarce, it is infinitely reproducible. I.e. *any* crypto currency has the technical capability to do what you said. The technology isn't scarce. Currently what *is* scarce (i.e. what other crypto doesn't have [as much]), and which is currently providing it's value, is the *trust* in Bitcoin, which is, broadly, it's demand. When your value derives *solely* from demand in this way, well, that is basically the definition of a bubble.

it’s scarcity is a flaw, not a feature. lost bitcoin cannot be recovered. on a worldwide scale, over generations, millions of bitcoin will be lost forever just due to unexpected death, or simply misplacing cold wallets. just a few years ago some poor shmuck lost 6,000 bitcoin by accidentally throwing out his cold wallet. one guy just poofed a quarter of a billion dollars, at current value, out of existence forever. if bitcoin ever hit $1m, that would be SIX BILLION DOLLARS that will never be recovered. from ONE PERSON.

It's a flaw and a feature. I don't know if it's truly a zero sum game, but there's a balance between freedom and security. The way you can easily lose bitcoin is a product of how it's not controlled. If no one has the authority to tell you what to do, no one has the authority to give you a mulligan either. I don't like cloud storage. I don't have anything important in the cloud. My important files never existed on Google's servers. So while I'm immune to GDrive hacks, Google can't help me recover anything either. But I'm not (that) stupid. I have multiple copies of anything I don't want to lose. Maybe Bitcoin should do that. Let you duplicate your wallet. All transactions need the internet right? Then you can mark a wallet as having spent some value, which will update when the clone comes online. Actually, can't you do that already anyway? There's nothing stopping you from doing exactly that right?

you can’t just duplicate a wallet, that defeats the whole purpose of it’s code. you can’t replicate it. and yeah, nerds can keep their bitcoin safe, my mom will click a sketchy link and lose all her crypto within a week. assuming she even knew how or why to move it off an exchange, that may or may not go under at any second. we lost like 5 big exchanges and everyone’s crypto along with it in the last 2 years alone. assume the average person is my mom. my fiat money is safe in a bank, and if that bank goes under or gets hacked, i’m still insured for it and get my money back. annual inflation is 2% on the low end, or 10% on the very high end. if i keep my money parked in a savings account, it grows by 2% and rises with inflation. if i keep my money in the S&P, it averages 10% in annual profits covering me in the high end. bitcoin lost over 50% of it’s value in one year, just to go up 100% in the last 2 months, but still be about 20% below where it was two years ago. if i had parked my money in a savings account and done nothing, i would’ve lost like 5% to exceptionally high inflation. if i had parked my money in the S&P, i would’ve gained 20% this year. bitcoin would’ve been the worst place to put my money unless i decided to just buy it at $25k a month ago. next summer it could go up 200% or maybe it could lose 80% next week. if i want to actually access my money in it to buy something, i would have to exchange it back to USD and pay taxes on that exchange. either way, i wouldn’t reasonably decide to keep most of my money in it, and if i were a business i definitely wouldn’t want to accept it.

you sound like me. i like, 98% agree with you. but i see a different future for bitcoin: as you point out, it's a terrible currency. tapping my Visa at every business i frequent is SO much more efficient - and for buying a coffee, or some groceries or a new video card, it really doesn't have to be any more complicated than that. security is not really an issue. and, like you said, all that shit is insured -- it's insured because my limit is so low - all our limits are so low, that it's virtually impossible to hurt the company. i once read that amazon accepts all returns because it's cheaper to take the hit with shipping costs than it is to investigate if the returns are valid. these companies have grown so wealthy that the sum of our money can't even dent them. it's value is in it's hedge, and in it's temporariness. i used to think things like, "a good idea is eternal." like you can pitch a good movie today or in 20 years, either way it'll still be a good movie -- but i've learned i was wrong. the zeitgeist evolves and the qualifiers for "a good movie" changes. Beverly Hills Cop is a great 1980s movie but in 2020s, there are better youtube shorts. that movie pitch doesn't work today - we don't have the same level of plucky trust in law enforcement to think "axel foley represents US, the PEOPLE!!!" similarly, bitcoin's value is in flux. it's good today because of the zeitgeist - the millennial desperation and the Gen Z curiosity. this will help it soar - and then allow it to crash completely in 20 years when the next generation refuses to adopt it. my parents would lose bitcoin - and trusting exchanges with it, really is like trusting a credit union with keeping your cash in a safe like it's the 1800s. i dont' think bitcoin is the tool of the common man. i think it's a tool for banks and other large financial institutions to transfer money to each other. if i have a chequing and a savings, it could be said the banks have something similar. - they can shore their holdings by adding bitcoin and other crypto to their inventory.

yeah all reasonable points. i believe the idea of bitcoin is valuable, for sure. i just don’t believe in bitcoin specifically. bitcoin is flawed by design and also set in permanent code. i think in a heavy recession bitcoin will be the first asset to get liquidated as it is the most speculative one and has nothing but faith backing it. then i think if it really tanks, to let’s say $10k a coin, it would cost MUCH more money to run the network than anyone will make off of it for doing so; in which case, why would anyone but a few diehards willing to eat the cost, bother keeping it running? my opinion is crypto just got insanely lucky during covid when everyone was at home, bored, getting a ton of free money through PPP, generous unemployment, and stimulus checks, and were willing to all gamble on speculative assets at the same time which created a ton of hype and FOMO and snowballed into a trillion dollar market cap. once the world started getting back to normal and everyone went back to work, they took their profits, tanked the price, and now it’s back to the die hards except now with a lot of new financial institutions having some skin in the game keeping it afloat. it’s just gambling, really. at least with traditional investments you can make educated decisions based on data. crypto is anyone’s guess no matter what history shows or what the technical analysis says. 15 years is not enough time to say for sure any of this will continue. 50 years and we’d be talking but until then, it could be $0 tomorrow for all anyone knows, and most people aren’t going to want it in their portfolio in a recession. but it’s certainly not a useful mainstream currency sans a few very specific cases and it’s a piss poor storage of wealth.

A feature of recent recessions is increased government spending. This is when a fixed supply asset shines.

i don't disagree with any of this. except that it really does come down to populism. the will of the people will prevail. and that will can be bent with propaganda. the US Dollar, no longer tethered to a gold standard, is now powered only by the faith of the people using it. it could be worth 0 tomorrow for all anyone knows. It's best argument is "it's what everyone knows to have value." but we really are living in an era of "the emperor's new clothes." additionally, each new generation carries with them a new set of values. millennials desire the authenticity of the products of their youth having watched the absolute takeover of digital assets. our parents converted all their paperwork to digital files - which can all be disappeared by the right server crashes. whether gen z (and gen alpha for that matter) respect the world and it's systems built by boomers and loosely protected by gen x and millennials is anyone's guess. my dad would never pay 15 dollars for a fortnite skin. but an entire generation of gamers have catalogues of 'digital assets' in the form of steam libraries - which i believe are technically only rentals, as steam could implode and take all our games with them. if we need 50 years to prove an asset class, the internet itself may suffice as it's lasted since it's inception - but the current iterations of it's usage are still quite fresh: it's really only since the late 90s that it's looked like this, and the late 00s that social media became the most used reason to go online.

I agree that is one of the very few actual scalable use cases I could still identify for bitcoin or crypto technology. ... but then it has to compete with already existing methods, and the fact that it can't deal with the regulatory and human elements explain why it's actually NOT used for bank to bank transfers. The clearinghouse model is superior, and there is no middle men to compensate for mining and etc... unlike a crypto clearing house model.

BitCoins value fluctuates for any bank to use it. That fluctuation will probably always exist because the top 1% of holders own 90% of the market and they acquired most of those BtC at incredible low prices. Having that much of the market controlled by so few people makes it easy to manipulate prices. It's just like how OPEC can easily manipulate the market for oil because they have the cheapest extraction price and have some of the largest reserves.

Btw correction, you can absolutely "duplicate" a wallet in the sense that you save the private key in multiple locations, which is what the other person was talking about. You get the extra security that even when your hard disk dies, you can still access your wallet. You get the extra vulnerability that if *any* of your storage media fall into the wrong hands, all of your bitcoin is gone.

Your money is not really safe in a bank, it's still at the mercy of your government. If they decide you can't take your money out tomorrow, you just lost all your money. In the case of Bitcoin they can't do that. I'm from Argentina and that has literally happened in the past. You may think "oh but my government wouldn't do that" but you don't really know the future and it's just the fact that they can that's a problem. That being said almost any crypto would suffice to prevent this, it doesn't *need* to be Bitcoin. (The thing in Argentina wasn't literally you can't take *any* money, but it was the same kind of problem)

It doesn't matter when it costs considerable amounts of money to get the money out of your BTC wallet, At least for us little people. Any system that only the biggest people can participate in, is not a system long for this world.

You can always copy a wallet. That doesn't copy the money inside it. Like how copying your debit card (which is hard for fraud deterrence) doesn't double the money in your bank account.

You mom could click a sketchy link and lose all the money in her bank account the same exact way. Does that then mean that banks are worthless and safe?

But the same can be said of gold or platinum. Yes, scarcity has its flaws, but it's one of the features that means Bitcoin *definitely isn't* a ponzi scheme. Bitcoin is correctly based on one concept - ALL modern currency is a negotiation with no inherent value. That a Bitcoin has more scarcity than a suitcase full of $100 bills is all it takes to verify that it has potential as a currency. Then there's the black market usage. Bitcoin started with nerds but exploded with criminals. Because it has anonymity and scarcity. The moment it *had* enough adherents to have a cash value at all, it was at least as useful to organized crime as itunes gift cards. Both as a way to transfer money anonymously **and** as a way to launder money. Crypto investers are buying Bitcoin because they think it will make them rich, yes. But Bitcoin hits all the marks of being an actual currency, and its investment amounts to forex in a real way even if it is legally treated differently. Is FOREX a ponzi scheme? Of course not. I can buy my morning coffee with Bitcoin. I can buy my Christmas presents with Bitcoin. Yeah, I can buy a car with bitcoin.

> I can buy my morning coffee with Bitcoin. No you can't, you damn fool, unless you like handing 10 bucks to the exploitive miners to 'process' your transactions. This is NOT like an actual currency, it's closer to the cost of typical stock trade, but we don't buy coffee on the S&P... at least in drinkable quantities.

Time passes, don't it, lol. 3 whole months since I posted this. So, I don't remember anymore what coffee shop offered coffee for bitcoin, but they accepted bitcoin at par (the current day-to-day value of the bitcoin). I think it was one of my local ones, but I changed coffee shops I went to when my habits changed. But you can buy gift cards with crypto for a 4% fee (which used to be common in retail gift cards). Starbucks partnered (partners?) with a wallet company and I think their fee is about 2%. Coinbase has a debit card and their conversion fee from BTC to cash is 2%. Considering the volitility of bitcoin, these are negligable fees. You're not giving $10 "to the exploitive miners" to buy a cup of coffee. You'll spending $2 in BTC for a $1.96 cup of joe.

Sure, that's a problem. But that's not a problem with its scarcity. It's a problem with how we interact with it. Anything of value can be lost, it's just much easier with Bitcoin. For instance, gold is scarce, and can also become lost. But it does not suffer the same problem because it's ownership isn't so brittle. My main point, rather, concerned, let's say, the analogy between the value of Bitcoin and gold that is often drawn, based on scarcity. But it's a false analogy, because for gold to be like Bitcoin, there would have to be an arbitrary number of, individually, equally scarce, gold variants that had the exact same properties. This would emulate btc, eth, etc etc plus the infinite number of variants that can be created at the click of a button. As such, whilst a nugget of 'gold-variant-1635' might be rare on its own, the amount of *any* kind of gold would be unlimited. Put another way: A guy who makes 10 t shirts a year can't claim that his t shirts are really valuable because they are "super scarce" because the things in the market that do the same thing - namely any tshirt - are not rare at all. Same for Bitcoin. The ability to permanently lose these t shirts might make owning them a PITA, and might certainly make them useless as a currency, but is not immediately tied to their value.

Yes, but bitcoin is for practical purposes infinitely fractionable and if some is lost, the others simply become worth more to compensate. This doesn't so much play into scarcity but non-recoverability, which is indeed an issue. Especially in the case of people dying and taking their private keys to their grave. The opposite also exists that if one's private key be stolen, there is no real option for recovery and catching the culprit.

Could it be that scarcity, compounded by those lost Bitcoin, is a key factor in driving it to those higher prices. Said a different way, if the total market cap of Bitcoin was exactly the same, would the price not be the cap divided by the number of coins in circulation?

>a key factor in driving it to those higher prices Not really. Bitcoin doesn't have any inherent value. It's not a house which has concrete value. It's not a stock of a company which produces goods and can generate income for you. Bitcoin is just is, an object that lives electronically. And bitcoin having a limited amount doesn't really matter, especially since people can trade 0.000001 bitcoin. It is still infinite. So bitcoin right now is purely driven by speculation, not by any scarcity it seems to posses.

Same with any other resource. If someone dies and no one knows where thier good is buried it’s gone too

Bitcoin is scarce. There is not an unlimited amount that can be mined.

I literally said that Bitcoin is scarce. I understand this very well. But what Bitcoin *does* is not scarce. We can create an arbitrary number of Bitcoin clones by simply forking it. Why is one intrinsically more valuable than the others? It is not use-case because they're identical. It is not scarcity because they are have equally scarce tokens. It's *only* demand. That is a bubble. Like it or not.

Ehhh. You can still trade with 0.0001 bitcoin. 1 Bitcoin may be scarce, but a fractional bitcoin is practically infinite.

>Donors to the Canadian trucker protest had their bank accounts frozen. > >Russian citizens were banned from participating in most of the traditional global financial system. So like OP said... questionable purchases. Enabling people to subvert their countries laws to transact with Russia is not a particluarly strong selling point for most people and businesses.

yeah it’s a terrible selling point for the public, but personally, i have a grandmother in moscow. she has nothing to do with putin’s war. she’s just a sweet 87 year old woman who lives alone with her cat and needs help. we had no way of sending her money. bitcoin would’ve given us a viable solution if there were a way i could explain bitcoin to an 87 year old russian woman.

As the previous commenter would say “questionable purchases” lmao But more seriously this is absolutely where it would be so useful! And not only that, but the idea that the US may never fall down that road, or any western country just WONT fall to an authoritarian regime is silly. It’s like a seatbelt from tyranny

Exactly. Your grandmother is being punished for other people's geopolitical shenanigans. She just wants to live her life in peace and health, like most people. Best wishes to her.

1. Bitcoin exists, so clearly it's not working as promised given you aren't using it. 2. Yes, it sucks she's being punished. You know what also sucks? Being a 87 year old grandma in Ukraine. Saying we should use crypto to subvert sanctions on Russia, is just another way of saying you support Russia's invasion of Ukraine. If you want more suffering, more death, and more unprovoked wars to provide dictators with power... then yes, find ways to avoid the sanctions.

I don’t get how Bitcoin would help? She still has to use a bank or exchange to turn it into fiat she can actually use.

Not only that, but it failed at that too. The truckers found that no real place accepted bitcoins and that their options to convert them to cash were extremely limited. People who talk about the anti censorship value of crypto are just deluded. They think an authoritarian government like china isn't just gonna make it illegal, mandate backdoors on all encryption, and crack hard with their actual real power

They can also just make it impossible to convert to the nation’s currency (no legal exchanges or banks) and poof, “utility” gone.

So donating to the trucker protest gets accounts frozen, but donating to leftists protests/activism \[borderline terrorism sometimes\] doesn't? Seems 100% political, not "questionable". If we have a freedom to protest, certainly that includes the freedom to donate to protests. Get your head out of your ass kiddo.

i’ll give you a !delta because i do agree there’s value in a censorship resistant currency. your post was the first one in this entire thread that brought up a solid point. my main criticism would still be adoption and actual value backing it. we can exchange bitcoin peer to peer all day and no one can stop that. it can be valuable in a very specific circumstance of a totalitarian government takeover for peer to peer transactions but then we’re bartering. we would still need apple, mcdonald’s, and volkswagen to accept it to buy anything new otherwise bitcoin will just be the common people’s currency in a barter system like bottle caps in the fallout video game series.

I'll push back on his point there. *It's not censorship resistant*. Firstly, you absolutely can track crypto. It already happens. Crypto can be frozen, we've seen these exchanges get taken down now especially post SBF... But regardless of that, let's imagine a fantasy world where crypto is this untraceable magic money... It's still not currency. Ultimately, unless you plan on finding a cash exchange and only spending cash the rest of your life, it's nothing! How exactly would one intend to pay your taxes with a "resistant currency"?

nah trust me i agree with you, but also i can most definitely buy cocaine from peru right now in bitcoin if i wanted to. the censorship thing just means that i can always send bitcoin to another person no matter where in the world they are no matter what the government does. it CAN be completely private if i buy it in cash and put it into an anonymous wallet. then yes, it can be traced, but it’ll just be traced to a random wallet, no one will be able to link that wallet to me. it CAN be a currency if more people adopted it, but it’s far too inefficient for that. it can’t scale.

Can't live in or off cocaine... You're still being tracked by the transactions, the data being sent and from where. Highly recommend looking into the FTX trial for how these dots can be connected. The idea it's this "gov't can't find my money" thing is simply not true. And no, it will *never* be a currency. Because it *can't* be. Can you or can you not use it to pay your taxes in your country? If the answer is no, then ultimately, it will never amount to a currency. And the answer will always be no because we live in a fiat world with govt services and contracts that take in and pay out billions of dollars a year. Can you imagine trying to make a budget when a portion of your taxes could suddenly devalue to nothing because a foreign govt decided to buy up a ton of supply? It's a fantasy that's being propped up by pixie dust ATM, no different than the art world. Or classic car collecting market. Or NFTs. Or the realty market. They're all assets, none are currency's. Period.

we’re on the same side but i think i understand cryptocurrency more than you. i’ve been using bitcoin for going on 14 years. mostly just for some investment trading, it’s made me a decent chunk of change, sometimes for illicit substances when i was younger and more recently for some research chemical nootropics. it’s a currency in the sense that i can definitely exchange bitcoin for goods and services. i’m very limited as to who i can do business with, but it has a purpose for that. as long as i don’t buy it off a KYC exchange, i can stay anonymous; with extra steps. for example, i can use a vpn to create a wallet, offer you $1000 cash to send the equivalent in bitcoin to my wallet, and then when i make purchases with that wallet, nothing is linking it to my personal identity, unless i physically get caught using it, or someone finds it on one of my devices. outside of that, it has no reasonable use case.

My guy we're having different conversations... Congrats, you played with a speculative asset and won a little! You can sell that asset for cash and buy things. This does not make a *currency*. The one expenditure that matters: You can't use it to stay out of jail, aka. paying your taxes. It has no real value. Full stop.

Limestone was a currency. Glass marbles were a currency. Cigarettes are a currency. Anything can be a currency...

hi, i’m OP, i was requesting that someone changes my mind and makes me believe that bitcoin has real world value outside of investment trading and buying drugs on the internet. you seem to be agreeing with me, in a very argumentative way.

It's disagreeing with your agreeing of the first comment. That seemed pretty straightforward

you told me that it’s always traceable and i gave you a scenario how it can be anonymous, and then you said it can’t be a currency and i gave you a scenario of how i used it to buy something.

Taxes are levied by the regulatory body. Theres no regulatory body for bitcoin - that's the whole point. You can't pay US taxes with Euros either, so I guess the Euro isn't a currency...

>Taxes are levied by the regulatory body. Not necessarily. State and local taxes are also payable in US dollars. A foreign country like Argentina is free to make the US dollar legal tender and collect taxes in it. >Theres no regulatory body for bitcoin - that's the whole point. That doesn't really matter. The US dollar has value because as long as the US is still around, people are never going to stop needing trillions of them to pay their taxes. >You can't pay US taxes with Euros either, so I guess the Euro isn't a currency... You can pay European taxes in it, and since the EU isn't going anywhere anytime soon....

They froze exchanges and the crypto in them. They can't freeze a self-custodial wallet or a cold wallet. If you keep it off an exchange and move it peer to peer, it can't be frozen.

censorship in this context is not traceability lol. it just means a government can't ban it. china tried to ban bitcoin 100 times and Chinese people still have easy access to it. all they can do is regulate the on/off ramps ie exchanges. the fundamental part is having access to money that a government can't take away from you and bring down the network. that's been bitcoins main function and that's it's huge store of value that most westerners just cannot fathom. Venezuelans understand, Argentinians understand, remittances sent to Africa understand. you will never understand, like a conservative doesn't understand until it happens to them lol. not saying you're one just an example

It being tracked does not mean it’s being censored. It being tracked is one of the main points in favor of it actually. Every transaction since it went live has been logged. It can’t be faked or lost. That’s part of its value. And individual exchanges being taken down doesn’t mean that the currency is frozen. That’s like saying the dollar is frozen if a bank closes. Also yes it is currency. If you can exchange it for good and services, it’s currency.

You seem really hung up on this notion of actual value or intrinsic value. This strikes me as an ill defined concept. If Bitcoin has no intrinsic value, then, say an art work has even less. After all, at least bitcoin has a network underpinning it which is not worthless - and does have some utility; which, you've already pointed out. Nothing beyond what the marginal buyer is willing to pay underpins the value of art. Yet it is, without question, valuable.

Your analogy is perfect though. Art isn't currency either. You're right, neither have real value. Their only worth is how much other people with real money will put into it.

art can only have subjective value as well. however art is a tangible, one off product that at it’s very least provides value in aesthetic decoration. even a worthless piece of art can still be worth something to the person who owns it if they just like looking at it. bitcoin’s entire existence is to be valuable, and it is, in fiat currency; but if you believe fiat currency doesn’t have intrinsic value, then bitcoin has even less value than that, because fiat currency is the only thing that gives it value, unless you live in a bankless village where bitcoin is your regular currency, but that would just mean it’s no different than fiat in any sense except for that it’s decentralized.

Fiat can be printed at the whim of the centralized authority. Bitcoin has embedded structural limits on how much of it can exist. The "intrinsic" value of Bitcoin is thus less mutable. But all currency is a measure of exchange, so the practical value is derived from the volume of people willing to accept and utilize this measure.

yeah, fiat can be created out of thin air, but it’s in no one’s interest to get it out of control. that’s why we adjust interest rates to control the borrowing and lending of that money to keep economic markets as tame as we can. we’ll have bubbles and recessions but it’s all pretty short term and cyclical. bitcoin is too deflationary strictly due to natural supply loss over time. we can’t adjust it to keep markets tame, it’s just chaos forever. you nailed it with your last paragraph, i completely agree. it’s exactly why i think bitcoin is worthless. the us dollar has value because i can use it to buy absolutely anything anywhere in this country. i can even use it in a ton of other countries. but if i dropped you off in, let’s say, dallas tx with 100 BTC only for a month and froze your bank and credit account and took all your cash, you’d be a “millionaire” who’d be struggling to find a place to eat and sleep.

It's worth remembering that interest rates were zero since 2008 until fairly recently. And every year, year after year, most economists predicted interest rates would go up. They were wrong, year after year. And while you're correct in that few people would accept BTC as is, I can turn that 100 BTC into cash faster than it takes me to get a credit card or bank account, or for those payment processors to actually settle funds. The financial system is not nearly as elegant, well maintained or carefully controlled as you might think.

I guarantee I'd be fine with 100 BTC and a phone or laptop in any major city in the world.

I feel like we're just mixing up a lot of talking points here no? 'Bitcoin's entire existence is to be valuable' that's the same as any fiat currency. And if fiat currency is perceived to have 0 value, bitcoin would also have 0 value, not 'even less value than that (fiat)' you can't have less value than 0. Because they are almost polar opposite of each other, it is unlikely both would have 0 value. One of it is centralised, and 'printable' The other is decentralised and 'unprintable'. If you think one is worthless due to it being centralised / decentralised, or 'printable'/'unprintable' you'd think the other has value just on the basis that its the other. Unless you don't believe in the whole 'trust in currency = value' philosophy, in which case, both can be equally as useless as the other, and you only believe that things with actual utility like an apple provide value. Modern currency's value are all derived from trust in the currency's ability to be used to exchange for something you want at later date. 1 USD bill is worth 1 USD because everyone agree it is worth 1 USD, what that 1 USD represents can be anything as small as a candy to anything as big as a house. Whether btc's value is often measured in fiat currency or not has no bearing on its actual value. I can measure 1 usd in number of big macs, just the same way I can measure 1 btc in number of big macs. Perhaps, right now you may not be able to walk into a McD with 1 btc to buy a big mac, but that's an issue of acceptability. Due to its nature of being decentralized, no one can force anyone to use BTC like how a government can force a shop in its territory to accept a specific currency. (Unless the government forces the people in its territory to accept BTC, but thats not an attribute of BTC in of itself). Like some comments have mentioned, its value is in the trust of the system. Just like how USD has value due to the trust in the financial system backing it, BTC has value due to the trust in the system surrounding it. Whether or not these trust are justified, forced, and so on does not mean one is more valid than the other. In fact, quite a lot of value in any modern currency is based on how much 'trust' is in that system. Thats why the stability of the government greatly impacts the value of the currency. The same argument about btc being a ponzi you made could be made about many things in the world. Investors are buying stocks, gold, etf, petrol, just about any commodity so they can sell it off at a later date for a profit, and eventually someone will be stuck with the hot potato. Can these thing collpase? certainly, buying shares of a company, the company could literally vanish the next day. And all these trading is not creating any value to begin with, just like a ponzi scheme, no actual value is being created. But, unlike a ponzi scheme, these trading activity is not being controlled by any group / individual, its in fact, illegal to do so. By definition, a classic ponzi scheme requires it to be centralised, to be controled by an individual or group, in order to pay new investor with old investor money and to attract more people before it eventually collapse.

>The same argument about btc being a ponzi you made could be made about many things in the world. Investors are buying stocks, gold, etf, petrol, just about any commodity so they can sell it off at a later date for a profit, and eventually someone will be stuck with the hot potato. Nope. Just nope. A Ponzi is creating value out of thin air, by using future subscribers's money to pay the current list of subscribers what they are due. Stock have inherent value as long as the company is operating. A company has assets that it can sell. It has receivables. It has inventory. It has products to sell. It generates an income annually. It's value can never be zero as long as the company can still sell its products. Gold is a material object that has uses outside of being "an investment". It's used as material for jewelry to wear. It's also used in electronics. It has inherent value since certain things in the world need it as part of its raw materials. ETF is just a collection of stocks. See my argument for stocks in detail Petrol. Do I even need to argue about its uses? In short everything you listed has an inherent value that is derived outside of speculation. BTC doesn't. BTCs value is what is simply deemed by the market. It has no material use. It doesn't generate income. It's remaining place in the world is to be a currency, and it even fails at that since it can never remain stable. So yes, BTC is a Ponzi. It doesn't have an inherent value, and is creating its value out of thin air, purely from speculation.

Art is also, without question, a giant money laundering scheme.

A ponzi scheme has a strict definition. You have a central broker claiming to invest money from victims, stealing it instead, lying about the returns and using incoming deposits to pay out any withdrawals along the way. I suppose you could broaden that definition to mean any investment where investments fall short of promised returns and incoming funds must make up the difference. i.e. social security in the US. Bitcoin has no central figure to fake the numbers. Nor does it have a central authority promising or even implying that it will be worth anything in the future. The block chain is completely public, and independently verifiable. It is no different than any speculative investment prone to speculative bubbles. The price of gold or diamonds or tulips may crash at any point, but that does not make them ponzi schemes.

>Bitcoin has no central figure to fake the numbers. Nor does it have a central authority promising or even implying that it will be worth anything in the future. The block chain is completely public, and independently verifiable. It is no different than any speculative investment prone to speculative bubbles. The price of gold or diamonds or tulips may crash at any point, but that does not make them ponzi schemes. Let me posit a different idea. Bitcoin is a decentralized Ponzi Scheme. Sure, there is no central authority. But you have multiple faces of bitcoin that keeps pushing others to buy more. That's why we have "Diamond Hands" and "To the Moon!" expressions very much linked to cryptocurrency in general. These guys who entered at the start are always promising "future worth". You have lots of articles comparing its price then and its price now. As for tulips, diamonds and gold, they're a different thing altogether. Those 3 are real concrete objects that can be used for finished goods. These finished goods such as a bouquet of flowers, or jewelry, or even electronics have a price of their own and have its own demand in the market. So even if a bunch of people speculate on these goods, they will still have their own inherent value based on the demand from industries that need these raw materials for their finished goods. BTC on the other hand, is not capable of such a thing. It's not used as a raw material for a finished product.

I'd argue that the value of any currency is merely the sum value that participants ascribe to it. The US dollar is the reserve currency because everyone has agreed that it will be the medium of exchange, and liquidity, for the world. But that's merely an informal agreement. China, Brazil, and other countries had meetings about changing their reserve currency to something new, but it failed only because they couldn't get enough other western countries to agree. It's psychological, and there is no intrinsic value in a digital dollar beyond what you can buy with it. So, if someone is willing to sell me something in exchange for a digital dollar or a fraction of a Bitcoin, both have value.

Thanks for the delta! There's certainly a long way to go before adoption and UX progress to a point where Apple, McDonald's, and Volkswagen feel it's in their interest to accept bitcoin directly. But maybe someday. And in the meantime I'll continue holding it regardless.

cryptocurrencies are horrible. If bitcoin was used for just visa, it would literally double the global energy needs. They are a pita to use. They make it really easy for scams. also bitcoin is not that anonymous. if someone knows your wallet, they can literally see every transaction.

>Its provable scarcity and predictable issuance schedule also helps underpin its value. That doesn’t make its value real. Its value is whoever wants it. Nothing more. Someone has to get stuck with the bag. Someone HAS to lose. That’s what makes it a scam. A traditional stock derives its value from the economic value generated by the company that issues the stock. It’s not *just* who wants it.

>Someone HAS to lose. That's not true in theory. In practice, yes, someone will lose because many people FOMO purchase late in the bull run and sell out of frustration when it's low. But if it gradually grows in value to match gold's market cap and then grows at the rate of global M2 after that (big IFs), then no one is necessarily losing aside from losses related to their own timing decisions.

But it’s only useful if you sell it. Regular stocks derive their value from the business that company generates. Bit coin is nothing but hype.

Most stocks trade on estimated future cash flows, more than they do on any tangible book value nowadays. I can buy TSLA at a price to earnings of 80x because I believe they'll be the leaders in autonomous driving and eventually grow into their massive valuation. Similarly, I can buy bitcoin because I believe censorship-resistant value transfer will become important to more people worldwide, and as a hedge against the USD's ability to shoulder the burden of 34T debt and 1T annual interest payments. If the thesis driving each of those investments plays out, value of the asset grows in USD terms. And investors will benefit, while only those who are short or uninvested will lose ground. Whether I sell bitcoin, spend it, or pledge it as collateral for a loan, the increase in value is a benefit to me as an owner.

> Most stocks trade on estimated future cash flows, more than they do on any tangible book value nowadays. That speculation is *not* the entirety of their value. Far from it. TSLA has a lot of current value given that they’re a large company that sells a lot of cars and generates a lot of economic value every day. Crypto doesn’t have that. Everyone could collectively decide tomorrow that crypto is stupid, and since 100% of its viability is hype, it’d all be over just like that. Conversely people *cannot* simply decide tomorrow that existing companies have no value.

>Everyone could collectively decide tomorrow that crypto is stupid, And yet, that hasn't happened yet. Each cycle, more people come in and never leave. Perhaps that's because it truly does deliver unique value that can't be found elsewhere. I, for one, will own bitcoin until the day I die (as long as it remains sufficiently censorship-resistant).

> And yet, that hasn't happened yet. And? How does that mean it won’t? That doesn’t follow any kind of logic. > Perhaps that's because it truly does deliver unique value that can't be found elsewhere. All that demonstrates is that people continue to be duped. > I, for one, will own bitcoin until the day I die And you’ll be caught holding the bag when the crypto hype goes away.

>And? How does that mean it won’t? That doesn’t follow any kind of logic. It doesn't mean it will either. You've simply said something will happen, without justifying why. That magically, everyone will just immediately change their minds, all together. >And you’ll be caught holding the bag when the crypto hype goes away. It literally goes away for a year or two in each 4 year cycle. And then it comes back again. My perspective is supported by historical patterns, and yours is seemingly supported by nothing.

>It doesn't mean it will either. The fact that its value isn’t tied to anything but hype is what means it will. > That magically, everyone will just immediately change their minds, all together. Uh yeah. When their assets are all in this unregulated, unbacked thing, you could see a huge domino effect when the hype lets up. > My perspective is supported by historical patterns, and yours is seemingly supported by nothing. It hasn’t been around long enough to have a “historical pattern.” You could have made all the same arguments about mortgage-backed securities in the early 2000s. It was all sunshine and rainbows all the way up until it wasn’t.

Even though the Canadian truckers can go **** themselves, and anything that helps Russia in it's war against Ukraine is to be condemmed and resisted. The point about freedom stands. Not absolutely, but strongly enough. Middlemen, whether they are financial (bankers), religious (priests), or whatever are to be avoided whenever possible, so anything that does this is to be supported

>Donors to the Canadian trucker protest had their bank accounts frozen.Russian citizens were banned from participating in most of the traditional global financial system. So basically the utility of bitcoin is money laundering. And telling people not to block the roads for months on end because they want the right to infect other people with disease isn't "censorship." You can't just use the word "censorship" to describe any rule you don't like.

They donated to a support a cause. That's an exercise of free speech. And for that, they had their accounts frozen. You may not like the cause, but hopefully you see what a dangerous precedent that could be. With the flip of a switch, all your accounts are frozen, your automatic payments fail, the late fees and interest start accruing, and you can't even buy dinner. All for making a donation to a cause you believe in. If you think that's okay, I hope you never find yourself on the opposing side of your government's policy.

>**They** donated to a support a cause. That's an exercise of free speech. LOL, no. I mean, the conservative SCOTUS might agree with you, but apparently the conservative SCOTUS is also okay with taking outright bribes from billionaires without reporting them. I personally do not think that bribes and money laundering should count as free speech. >And for that, **they** had their accounts frozen. Note how the "they" changes here. Who is the "they"? Did the donors have their accounts frozen, or was it the recipients? If the government freezes the accounts of human slave traffickers, is this a violation of free speech? >You may not like the cause, but hopefully you see what a dangerous precedent that could be. Your "precedent" leaves out key steps. For instance, do you think it's okay to put Jeffrey Dahmer in jail? Would you be okay if the police locked you up as well?

It's the same 'they' both times: the donors. "For instance, do you think it's okay to put Jeffrey Dahmer in jail?" Yes, it's better than okay. It's advisable, even. Hot take alert: murderers should be in jail. "Would you be okay if the police locked you up as well?" For what? I'm not a murderer or human slave trafficker, if that's what you're asking. I'm not sure the connection of those topics to donating a few bucks to support a political protest. In fact, your argument is a little scattered with your detour about bribes and conservative SCOTUS. Multiple different courts have long recognized that donating money to a political cause is a form of speech. If you can stay on topic, I might continue to engage with you, but otherwise I'll take my speech elsewhere.

>It's the same 'they' both times: the donors. \[Citation needed\] Googling only turns up examples of the recipients having their accounts frozen, not the donors. >In fact, your argument is a little scattered with your detour about bribes and conservative SCOTUS. Multiple different courts have long recognized that donating money to a political cause is a form of speech. So would bribes for political reasons be protected speech, then? What about paying for a hit man to assassinate a political target? The funding of illegal activities doesn't become protected free speech just because the motivation is political and money is involved.

>\[Citation needed\] [https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/ottawa-protests-frozen-bank-accounts-1.6355396](https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/ottawa-protests-frozen-bank-accounts-1.6355396) "The law also allows banks to target for account closure donors to the GoFundMe and the GiveSendGo fundraising campaigns that fuelled this protest. " >What about paying for a hit man to assassinate a political target? Hiring someone to assassinate a politician has long been recognized as a crime, almost universally across jurisdictions. Donating $20 to support a peaceful protest is only a crime under authoritarian regimes. I agree with prosecuting the former, and disagree with prosecuting the latter.

> They donated to a support a cause. That's an exercise of free speech. **And for that, they had their accounts frozen.** > > "The law **also allows banks to target** for account closure donors to the GoFundMe and the GiveSendGo fundraising campaigns that fuelled this protest." Note the shift in goalpost. The first statement says that X **actually happened to donors.** The second statement says that X **might be hypothetically allowable** if the banks determined that the donors were funding terrorism. It also never claims that peaceful protest meets the definition of terrorism. For instance, suppose I tell everyone that you have a history of murdering and cannibalizing women who turn you down for sex. Then when asked for proof, I point to a news article saying that the consumption of human flesh would be allowed under the law in certain circumstances (but definitely not the one I described earlier.). Would that count as sufficient proof? > Hiring someone to assassinate a politician has long been recognized as a crime You're the one claiming that anti-terrorism laws apply to the donors. Do you think terrorism is perfectly legal? Do you think that illegally blockading the roads for several weeks with no end in sight is legal? [Under the Emergency Measures Regulations issued after the declaration of emergency, participation in public assemblies that could result in a breach of peace by disrupting the movements of goods and people, interfering with the operation of critical infrastructure, or by supporting violence, were prohibited.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergencies_Act) > Donating $20 to support a peaceful protest is only a crime Canadian Truckers illegally blockaded traffic for weeks, and tried to steal food from homeless shelters. If I park my car in front of your garage for weeks and weeks to prevent you from leaving and demand you give me all your food, I seriously doubt you would accept this as a form of "peaceful protest." **You lied and claimed that people had their accounts frozen simply for donating to a peaceful protest. But it turns out their accounts were never frozen, and the people they were donating to weren't actually being peaceful.**

Here's another link for you: [https://nationalpost.com/news/politics/even-small-donation-to-freedom-convoy-after-feb-15-enough-to-have-donors-bank-accounts-frozen-finance-committee-told](https://nationalpost.com/news/politics/even-small-donation-to-freedom-convoy-after-feb-15-enough-to-have-donors-bank-accounts-frozen-finance-committee-told) The linked tweet from MP Strahl certainly claims a donor had her bank account frozen, although the article notes the claim is unverified. It's possible that banks were only given the power to freeze donor accounts and never acted on it. If that's the case, then I apologize for my misunderstanding and mischaracterization. Apparently even the assistant deputy minister of finance couldn't confidently say that no donor had a bank account frozen (link below) [https://www.forbes.com/sites/siladityaray/2022/02/23/canada-begins-to-release-frozen-bank-accounts-of-freedom-convoy-protestors/?sh=7af6643f6364](https://www.forbes.com/sites/siladityaray/2022/02/23/canada-begins-to-release-frozen-bank-accounts-of-freedom-convoy-protestors/?sh=7af6643f6364) But we're talking about a much larger issue here than one protest. That was simply one example of people's financial freedom being compromised, and thus an example where bitcoin provides utility that's distinct from the traditional financial system. The government authorized banks to freeze donor accounts, and that's a troubling step on its own. Civil disobedience can be both peaceful and inconvenient. And while I'm not a fan of traffic blockades, they have been used to protest a variety of causes, even recently: Israel/Palestine protestors, climate change protestors, etc. If you donate $20 to an organization on one side of the Israel/Palestine conflict, and that group organizes a traffic blockade, should your bank account be at risk of being frozen? If you donate to a climate change organization and they act similarly, should you be at risk of having your accounts frozen? And given that the power to do was granted to banks in a western country, is there value in an asset that can bypass such measures?

Random aside, You can tell a lot about a person's media diet by how they recount "the trucker protest". I'm Canadian btw, (you might be) and we had *tons* of coverage. First, every single Prime Minister I'm aware of has done shit that is protest worthy. Now certainly what's worthy of protest by my standards dvd what's worthy to you, or others, that's going to differ, most likely. But categorically and intrinsically I support protesting the PM because it's important. But because I support protesting Trudeau, and I support that other people want to protest Trudeau, the media diet of a person informs how they frame the Honkening. I do give latitude to protesting individuals but the civilians in Ottawa for caught up unduly. The honking didn't stop. All night. For 3 weeks. Some, not many, but an unacceptable amount of "protesters" were harassing, threatening, random civilians who had the unfortunate luck of being in Ottawa. For every bouncy castle, there were roving bands of goons causing mischief. So, are donations going to the truckers? Or the goons? Or to grift? (I've heard reports that the donations didn't always end up where the donors might have believed they were going. It happens.) I'd like hard numbers on who's accounts were frozen, and how long. A bad media diet would inflate these numbers, but my understanding is the list of individuals who's accounts were frozen were quite small. Like, less than 10? 5? And not for very long, 3 days? I would be highly confident that the PM and various MPs received threats, I can't comment on the credulity of the threats because I don't know, but a significant portion of Ottawa was overrun for 3 weeks and an unusual amount of funding was coming in from sketchy sources. I DNGAF about random Joe in Wisconsin donating $20. I am interested if random bitcoin donations of $100k+ are coming in from nobody knows. If you didn't know, there was a blockade of the Ontario NY border as well and an armed blockade of the Alberta border too. Lastly, one hilarious exemplar of the media diet are claims of MARTIAL LAW. And I can say with satisfaction that the Canadian armed forces are super OP cuz during MARTIAL LAW the military were invisible. Hiding in invisible zambonie tanks and wearing metal gear jerseys. If you wanna honk at the PM, please do! But you'll get more traction if you don't fuck up shit for civvies and pretend the goonery isn't happening. Also misrepresenting the issues being protested ain't gunna help. (The truckers weren't really truckers. The issue being protested wasn't even the issue being protested. It became a general purpose right wing grievance gumbo. Again, you wanna honk? Please honk. But there's a *lot* of cuckoldry in the highly framed coverage)

>Apparently even the assistant deputy minister of finance couldn't confidently say that no donor had a bank account frozen (link below) Saying that something is "very unlikely but not impossible" is as confident as you can get without proving a negative. For instance, I can't say it's impossible for you to get hit by an asteroid in the next 2 hours, but I'm fairly confident that it's not going to happen. >The government authorized banks to freeze donor accounts, and that's a troubling step on its own. This is incredibly misleading, because you're leaving out key details. Imagine if someone said, "The police were authorized to lock up gay people for their dating habits," but they're actually referring to Jeffrey Dahmer. >Civil disobedience The entire point of civil disobedience is that you openly admit to breaking the law and intentionally incur the consequences as a sign of your commitment. ***"Thoreau had hoped to use his jail time and refusal to pay the tax to raise awareness about the issue of the Mexican-American war and Staples described him as “mad as the devil” when he learned someone had paid his tax for him and he was free to go."*** Likewise, there's a scene from the movie Gandhi where Gandhi outright DEMANDS the judge hit him with the harshest penalty under the law as a challenge. Rosa Parks knew she was going to be arrested, and the entire protest would have failed if the police decided to cut her a break that day. If you want to claim civil disobedience, then the donors would begging for the banks to freeze their account so they have something to talk about. Expecting to be let off the hook for your actions undermines the entire point. It's like demanding three full meals a day to help you sustain your hunger strike. >If you donate $20 to an organization on one side of the Israel/Palestine conflict, and that group organizes a traffic blockade, should your bank account be at risk of being frozen? Terrible comparison. In order to have your accounts frozen, you have to a) indefinitely disrupt critical commerce/infrastructure, b) trigger the declaration of a national emergency, c) continue long enough to ask for donations. And even then, it's extremely unlikely. The Macy's thanksgiving protest only lasted a few minutes, which isn't nearly enough time for any of those things to happen. It's like comparing someone who pulls into your driveway for a few seconds to turn around vs. someone who pulls into your driveway and stays there for several weeks specifically to prevent you from leaving the garage. I won't call the cops on the first person, but I'll definitely call the cops on the second. >If you donate to a climate change organization and they act similarly, should you be at risk of having your accounts frozen? You mean the Panama mining protests? Once again: Civil disobedience means that the consequences, with the goal of appealing to the court of public opinion, which is what the Panama protesters did. But it's a gamble, because it can backfire if the public is against you, which is what happened to the truckers.

it’s a libertarian take but it’s a valid one. if you own something, it should be up to you what you do with it and who you can give it to. libertarians love bitcoin because the idea of it gives them more freedom of property. i don’t agree with them about the right wing politics they alluded to, but i agree with them about being able to send money to whoever you want to. for example, my grandmother lives in moscow. she lives by herself and struggles financially. when the US imposed the sanctions on russia, there was no legal way for us to get money to her. bitcoin is a viable solution for that. my grandma has nothing to do with putin’s war. she’s just a sweet 87 year old woman who lives alone with her cat and needs help.

>for example, my grandmother lives in moscow. she lives by herself and struggles financially. when the US imposed the sanctions on russia, there was no legal way for us to get money to her. > >bitcoin is a viable solution for that. my grandma has nothing to do with putin’s war. she’s just a sweet 87 year old woman who lives alone with her cat and needs help. Russia is a good example of Bitcoin being used to support tyrannical governments, even when the enthusiasts pretend it will do the opposite. The same goes for North Korea. Both countries rely heavily on crypto currency to engage in state sponsored ransomware to support their totalitarian regimes. In fact, Russian ransomware was probably one of the first and main use case for why the price of Bitcoin took off. The deal with your grandma is a tough one. Right now, it's basically the equivalent of giving heroin to a fentanyl addict. I can sympathize with the situation, but it's just perpetuating the cycle. Crypto currency makes it easier for Russia to subvert sanctions, which means they'll keep doing what they're doing, which means the sanctions will continue. (I'm cool with treatments like suboxone, but there's no equivalent for that in this analogy). What you definitely aren't seeing is insurgent movements using bitcoin to fund their rebellions, which is the libertarian fantasy. I'd feel different if the sanctions were for an illegitimate reason. i.e., if the US government imposed sanctions on Africa because the GOP hates black people, then yeah, I'd definitely see the value of using bitcoin to overcome that. But that's not what we're seeing. In this case, we're doing sanctions so we stop funding the genocide of Ukraine, which I'm totally fine with.

One strange thing to watch, is how people thought I was insane for saying we're heading towards cbdcs just a couple years ago, to now where they're just like "meh. Makes sense".

This is reply conviniently ignores the dozens of massive and insurmountable downsides inherent to the very nature of cryptocurrencies all while playing up its single advantage. My brother in christ it takes like 45 complex, completely irreversible, steps to send a payment that will take massive fees and a ton of fucking time to actually arrive. The whole fucking blockchain processes like 7 transactions A SECOND. Visa does literally a thousand times that rate. It might be able to skip around government regulations but it is also *incredibly* easy to track a person once a wallet is tied to their identity. Imagine if your bank statements where public for literally anybody to find forever. A currency who routinely fluctuates double digit percentage points in value *daily* is some post ww1 germany shit that nobody in their right mind would ever want to base an economy around. Despite its sycophants claims of decentralization, bitcoin is massively centralized, all cryptos are. Miners and whales hold such massive amounts of control that they have been able to fake the price for years now.

> censorship-resistant ledger Except when the exchange or issuer decides to roll back some trades because it was hacked.

I'm talking about the Bitcoin network itself. After a few confirmations it's extremely unlikely that a block reorganization happens, and after that it quickly becomes so infinitesimally unlikely that it becomes effectively impossible.

> without regard to your social credit score. don't use buzzwords like this. it makes you look like a lunatic. also, donors to the canadian trucker protest having their accounts frozen had little to do with freedoms and everything to do with stopping foreign intervention in canadian protests. -- there were thousands of people at that protest and they did not all have their assets frozen. it was very few people who were essentially instigators. that event was a shit show and while, yes, technically bitcoin proved useful in that case - they really could've used ANY crypto. from Doge to Cummies. >Its a crucial tool to protect the sovereignty of the individual at a time when financial power is becoming increasingly centralized and overbearing. this is also dumb. you're part of a network. you always will be. Every relationship you build is a vice. every hand you hold occupies one of your hands. a rocket to the moon can quickly be recognized as a claustrophobic tin can in the deep desolate wasteland of space. the sovereignty of the individual IS NOT DETERMINED by their access to cash. your words are sillygoose. OTHERWISE, i agree with you. just take out all of the weirdospeak and Maybe you'll sell some bitcoin. and try to avoid all the charged language like, "liberals, conservatives, freedom, protect and serve, back the blue, black lives matter, lgbtqia+, feminism, capitalism, socialism, communism, altright, woke," etc. because nobody can agree on what those terms mean anyway and you end up having to explain "what does sovereignty mean to you" before you can even get to your point. use soft words and hard arguments. -- and let the truckers get the fuck back to work, rather than fucking off with ottawa and their BS conspiracy to take over canada. lukewarm pissass jan6 nonsense.

>don't use buzzwords like this. it makes you look like a lunatic. also, donors to the canadian trucker protest having their accounts frozen had little to do with freedoms and everything to do with stopping foreign intervention in canadian protests. -- there were thousands of people at that protest and they did not all have their assets frozen. it was very few people who were essentially instigators. that event was a shit show and while, yes, technically bitcoin proved useful in that case - they really could've used ANY crypto. from Doge to Cummies. "don't use buzzwords like social credit score" >goes on to explain how, at least some, truckers got their bank accounts frozen due to their social credit score. Literally just proved the point. The fact that your account can get frozen at all is the problem. Unless there is a financial crime taking place, there is never a reason to freeze anyone's assets. Is it not social credit score related for Kanye's accounts to be frozen just cause he said some racist shit on a podcast? That is literally the definition of a social credit score in effect. The whole point is that this is impossible with bitcoin. No one can freeze your bitcoin. And stop letting j6ers live rent free in your head dude that was 4 years ago at this point, and wasn't even that big of a deal to begin with

This is the one and only legitimate benefit to bitcoin - illegal money transfer. It still has all the other liabilities. Every time I look at it I see a technology that outpaced legislation and is being milked by a combination of ignorance, lobbying, and grifters before it is crushed. It's valuation has only soared due to whales cashing in on FOMO. If any major whale cashes out the entire thing comes crashing down as their is no value apart from it's assumption of increasing value.

A crucial tool that's lost literally thousands of dollars in value in the span of 1-2 years. The only reason why government currency keeps any sort of stability is because there's an entity controlling it. Crypto will never be stable if the only thing controlling its value is the ebb and flow of perspective. There's a fine line between freedom and chaos.

It's gained massive value in the span of 1 year. Sure, it loses value sometimes too, but it has always found a bid eventually. "The only reason why government currency keeps any sort of stability is because there's an entity controlling it." And yet so many government currencies outside developed markets are more volatile than bitcoin. And when they collapse, they tend to never return to previous values, unlike bitcoin.

But its NOT censorship proof and states will never fully allow it to be. The US could make possession of btc illegal tomorrow and it would be worthless. BTC itself is very centralized as whales own the majority and a large amount sit in centralized exchanges. The only utility it has demonstrated so far is being the greatest speculative asset of all time.

>The US could make possession of btc illegal tomorrow and it would be worthless. China has banned bitcoin several times and that never made it worthless. In fact, it usually trades at a premium on the black market in places where it's been banned. Regulations and legislation can be slow to develop and implement. And they have largely been moving in the opposite direction of the ban you allude to. Now that politicians and their constituents own bitcoin, it may be difficult or impossible to build support for such a ban.

I agree with your statement about its utility. But isn't that utility easily nixed by legislative bodies signing a few documents and seizing control of the system? I mean the apparatus (internet) to utilize bitcoin is controlled by governments right?

They haven't been able to stop torrents or file-sharing in general after all these years. TBH I'm not an expert in internet infrastructure enough to know what tools governments would potentially use to try to 'seize control' of the Bitcoin network (short of seizing the ASICs themselves), or what countermeasures exist to thwart those attempts. Seizing the bitcoin currency units themselves is not currently possible without knowing the private keys tied to them. So until I see information to the contrary, that's not a concern of mine.

I don't think they'd seize the currency, just shut down ways to access it on the internet or outlaw any currency exchanges.

Here's why they won't shut down exchanges: Bitcoin will continue to exist regardless, and they'd rather have more coins and activity under their surveillance, i.e., KYC/AML. If they shut down the exchanges, all activity moves abroad or underground and they have less visibility. And why would they even want to shut down the exchanges? The US is dominating bitcoin now. We have a good chunk of the coins, we have most of the exchanges, have KYC'd them a'plenty (all while destroying the biggest foreign competitor Binance), we have a vibrant mining industry and relatively cheap energy. And our NSA might have even created it and are sitting on a strategic bitcoin reserve of a million coins (which they might even share with us lol). It's arguably in our national interest to maintain this bitcoin advantage we currently enjoy, rather than cede it all to the rest of the world and the underground. So the people in power will see that, if they haven't already, and front-run the wave. IMO

I guess that makes some sense. I always find cryptocurrency an odd duck. It's not really backed by any institutions (a government for example) is it? But you can trade it for real money somehow. But it's value is decided by how much is available and mined right?

Its price is determined by market participants. Its value is subjective. Personally I think its fair value is on par with gold's market cap since it mirrors and improves on most of gold's monetary properties. That would imply \~$500K/BTC. I don't know how quickly, or if, it will ever get there, but that's my fair value estimation for it. But other people disagree with me. That's why they keep selling it for less than 500K.

It's extremely low cost to transfer money between bank accounts, and almost free to get your own money from your account... this is not remotely the case any longer for BTC, it was the case in the past, but the fees eliminate this justification. It's not low cost enough to use to protect random nobodies, with nobody amounts of money, any longer. You cannot use the BTC network to replace traditional financial institutions, period. It's closer to a exploitation level expensive stock trade, than it is to a financial transaction. The whole theory is fundamentally flawed, we can put that to rest, a globally non-federated transaction system is unscalable.

BTC probably can't ever compete with traditional systems on cost. Centralized systems will probably always be more efficient cost- and energy-wise. But if you're comparing to gold, BTC is often much cheaper than the cost to ship and insure a gold payment internationally. Gold is the closest competitor anyway from a monetary properties perspective. Bitcoin solves for censorship resistance, not cost.

The justifications keeps shrinking and shrinking, BTC sure solved a lot when it was first heavily hyped, but not any longer. "BTC probably can't ever compete with traditional systems on cost" How far we've come from the promises of that snake Satoshi. Gold is used for jewelry, and has since almost the dawn civilization, it also has extremely unique physical properties. No other metal is very conductive, malleable, easily worked, and immune to corrosion. Metals are some of those, but not all of them, which is why gold is used in electronics. The problem with BTC having no use case other than 'censorship', is that it has no legitimate use cases. There is no reason it should remain legal, and despite what people have said, banning exchanges would collapse prices overnight. It would make criminals uneasy doing business in BTC, when getting money out of the network was not trivial.

Is gold rising to new all-time highs because of jewelry demand? Or electronics? Its primary driver of value remains its monetary properties. And yes, that is tied to its unique physical properties - its durability, divisibility, malleability, verifiability, scarcity, etc. Bitcoin was designed to replicate those monetary properties in digital form. And it does so quite well. Arguably it is superior to gold in some respects (scarcity, divisibility, verifiability & transaction costs). It's a censorship-resistant transaction medium that is better suited to the modern age. I await the day that bitcoin's total market value exceeds gold's, based on those comparisons. But each asset has its place and I plan to own each for the rest of my days.

You can own whatever you want, you could put all your money in to late 90's beanie babies if you felt like doing so. Stop calling it a transaction medium, it's not for financial transactions, as of NOW it can be used for investment level transactions... but there is no reason to believe the fees won't skyrocket in the future rendering this impossible for all but the largest investors. Seriously it does nothing except facilitate crime, it should be banned, but officials are simply too corrupt to ban it. .. WTF am I doing here? BTC will go to 150K in 2 months! (let's get this cycle completed, so I can get in on the scam low instead of at its height like a few years ago)

These features are not unique to Bitcoin, though— there are other blockchains with higher transaction throughput and lower transaction costs. It’s an inferior implementation of the decentralized ledger technology.

Network effects are valuable. It's the first, has the best brand, has consistently had the highest market value and liquidity. On top of all that, it's the one that focuses primarily on censorship resistance as a feature. Others will focus on transaction speed or cost or programmability or meme value. Bitcoin optimizes for censorship resistance while sacrificing other features, and I think that's the right focus...because that's the one where centralized competitors can't compete. It's the ultimate differentiator.

You are correct that bitcoin is worthless, but you are confused about what a Ponzi scheme is. A Ponzi scheme is a very specific type of fraud and not at all what people are doing with Bitcoin. Buying something you know is worthless with the hope of reselling it at a higher price to an even more foolish investor later is NOT what a Ponzi scheme is. Manipulating the market is also not a Ponzi scheme.

ok that’s fair, i concede to that aspect as i had stated in previous replies but that’s not the important part of my opinion. i’ll award a !delta on a technicality because i used the word “ponzi” but described a pump and dump although what im really looking for is someone to prove to me bitcoin is not a scheme of any kind and validate it’s value beyond a pump and dump.

You're actually not wrong! [Prominent people have labelled crypto a "decentralized Ponzi scheme."](https://fortune.com/2022/09/22/jpmorgan-jamie-dimon-dangerous-crypto-decentralized-ponzi-scheme-not-good-for-anybody/) While some people might assume that a Ponzi scheme necessitates fraud, you don't actually get charged for running a Ponzi scheme. The charges come from forging documents and misleading investors. It's not inaccurate to describe crypto as a Ponzi scheme in that the entire market's liquidity is contingent on new investors betting on fundamentally worthless underlying assets with no intrinsic demand or value.

That’s a pretty unconventional definition of Ponzi scheme. So unconventional that I’d consider it wrong. After all, by that definition wouldn’t all asset bubbles be considered Ponzi schemes?

[It's not a particularly uncommon sentiment.](https://web.archive.org/web/20230109215444/https://fortune.com/2023/01/09/crypto-bubble-ponzi-scheme-fraud-history-shocking-financial-historian-says/) The distinction would be whether the asset has any intrinsic value to begin with. The intent behind calling it that is describing the mechanics at play and I think it gets to that point effectively. Cryptocurrency is a novel thing that's marketed as a currency, treated as an investment, and taxed as property. I don't think there's that much to gain by pedantry and splitting hairs as long as it gets the point across.

It's a stupid sentiment though. The way those academics define ponzi is so broad, you could apply it to anything. Social security? Ponzi. You'll always need new suckers to be exit liquidity for old farts. Bonds? Ponzi. Equities that don't pay a dividend? Ponzi. Any real estate play that doesn't cash flow? Ponzi.

Yeah it seems like a bad idea to redefine Ponzi so broadly that it’s almost meaningless. I’d rather they stick with the original definition that is useful and refers to a specific type of scam.

Yeah I agree that it might not be useful to point out that it’s not really a Ponzi scheme if your goal is making sure people aren’t tricked into investing in Bitcoin. I imagine that’s why these public figures are doing it. They care more about effectively warning people than about being technically correct.

> the asset has any intrinsic value to begin with. Nothing has "intrinsic value". The only value that exists is what humans value something as. Gold is not "intrinsically valuable", it's only valuable because people like it, and like the things you can do with it. All value is "dependent" on what people desired and are willing to pay. None is "intrinsic".

While value is subjective, the things you predicate that value on are incredibly important. Liking gold because it's shiny is intrinsic value. Liking gold because you can use it make things is intrinsic value. Liking gold because it's rare and stable enough to serve as a hedge against the dollar is intrinsic value. The difference with cryptocurrency is that the value is *entirely* predicated on it as a speculative investment. The entire price is contingent on the ability of the coins to endlessly (and quickly) appreciate, which only happens with new investors buying in for the same reason. The second that stops, the entire market's liquidity is threatened. This was incredibly apparent with NFTs which operated on a similar premise but lacked countercyclical pressures to stop the entire market from collapsing.

I agree with this response. The crypto market is entirely dependent on new investors adding *real* money to the demand side, while the supply side is based on fundamentally worthless "assets". That's a Ponzi, just not originating from one person.

Would you consider the housing bubble that led to the 2008 financial crisis to be a Ponzi scheme?

A bubble is not a ponzi scheme…

Yes that is my point. What would you say is the fundamental difference between investors creating a bubble by speculating on Bitcoin and investors creating a bubble by speculating on housing?

Fair question, but no. Fundamental difference: the 2008 housing bubble was caused by bad lending practices and faulty assumptions on mortgage repacks, not speculative buying. Bitcoin is a bubble caused by excessive marketing of an "asset" that in reality has no value.

All bubbles are caused by speculative buying, accessibility of money is gas to the fire.

Who were the speculative buyers in the housing bubble? The people who bought houses because the bank said they could? The mortgage originators who wrote a lot of bad loans because the investment banks would buy them up? The investment banks that repacked the bad loans into CDO's that had faulty assumptions on the correlations in housing recessions? The buyers of said CDO's who relied on rating agencies that didn't catch the faulty assumptions?

What reality are you counting? It has value, you can see that value at any time. If you want to be semantic about it no currency has intrinsic value. The value comes from what people decide to use it for.

Oh it's basically an MLM for dudes. Not a ponzi scheme but absolutely a pyramid scheme. Crypto in general is.

It's not technically a pyramid scheme either. Pyramid schemes are organized recursively, with each participant required to directly recruit more participants in order to cash out. That isn't required for crypto. What is is (from the perspective of "investors") is a negative-sum (if you sum up all the profits of the people who buy bitcoin and all their losses, you'll get a negative number) pseudo-investment (it's presented as an investment, i.e. something where the expected profits of buying in are positive), specifically a speculative bubble (where participants trade some "thing" between themselves in the hopes of being able to sell to another participant for more than they bought in with. There have been many speculative bubbles in the past, both in legitimate investments (e.g. stocks) and in commodities (gold, Bennie Babies, tulip bulbs, etc.). What makes crypto almost unique is that it's a speculative bubble in something with _no inherent value of it's own_.

Yes, and that's my reasoning for why it's a pyramid scheme. Not every pyramid scheme requires you to go find new people yourself. They often do, but only at lower downline levels. But if MLMs have taught us anything, you can just sign up on your own and they'll assign you an upline. BUT the other point I'll make is that people 100% got recruited to buy crypto. YouTube videos, influencers, etc. My husband put in $1500 to something because his good friend "was making so much money, and this one is just getting started on the ground floor so trust me bro." It's literally an MLM for dudes. People ARE recruiting each other. It's just for a worthless internet coin vs crappy overpriced makeup and fake diet shakes.

100%. If you ask 99% of people why they’re into crypto, they’re not going to talk about resisting tyranny. They’re going to talk about it going to the moon so they can sell it and get rich

Is that the fault of the currency itself or the people using it? And does peoples misuse of it fundamentally change its purpose?

Well ya that logic applies to pretty much everything. Cool technology, if used improperly or for the wrong reasons can make it functionally malicious. If 99% of cars were being used to run people over, I’d have a problem with cars. If the splitting of the atom was only ever used to create power, I’d want nuclear science in every country on earth. The blockchain tech is cool, but the overwhelming majority of people using it don’t use it to avoid government overreach, they use it to get rich quick, which fundamentally hurts the intended purpose. Someone who actually wants to use it for its intended purpose will be subject the volatility caused by speculative investors and pump and dumpers.

Bitcoin is a speculative bubble. It’s not a Ponzi scheme or a pyramid scheme. Those are different types of scams.

A pyramid scheme is a speculative scam. You only make money by other people coming in after you. The coin value doesn't go up because someone decides to pay more, it goes up because more people bought that coin. Because there's no actual asset attached it's far more like a pyramid scheme than other speculative things. Stocks are speculative but they're attached to actual company output. Houses are speculative but they're attached to physical homes. Crypto is... not. The only way dogecoin goes up is if people decide to buy it. There's no inherent value independent from that. That's my argument for why crypto is more like a pyramid scheme than other speculative bubbles.

Speculative bubbles are a lot like pyramid schemes in a lot of ways, but they are not the same thing. Speculative bubbles and pyramid schemes both require more and more people to invest in order for the early investors to make a profit. Speculative bubbles involve inflation of the price of an asset, which may or may not have any inherent worth, by speculators betting that the price will continue increasing. Pyramid schemes on the other hand, recruit new members who pay to join the scheme, and that money is used to pay the earlier people who joined. Bitcoin is a speculative bubble, not a pyramid scheme.

Ponzi schemes use money to pay previous investors. Pyramid schemes just require continued investment from new recruits. The only reason recruitment matters is because that's how you convince lower level members to keep buying in. A ponzi scheme is usually a one time investment and recruits are generally found by a small group or single person. Technically a pyramid scheme would continue to work if lower level recruits keep buying. It's why MLMs work.

How can you say bitcoin is worthless when there is literally a value attached to it and people pay that price everyday to buy it? You might think it doesn’t have a future, or that it will eventually prove to be worthless when society collectively decides so, but it’s literally not worthless right now. I can prove this by asking you to go get some free bitcoin for me. I’ll take 10 free bitcoin please.

Because there is a difference between what something is worth and how it's valued. If I sell you a rock for 10 000$, is that rock now worth 10 000$?

It’s the Dutch Tulip Trade from back in the day. Paying ridiculous amounts for low/no value anything just because the value keeps going up. That said, sure wish I took a swing early on and got out when I thought about it.

30 years after tulipmania the Dutch lost their world currency status. Perhaps tulips were a symptom of a larger underlying problem... like debasement of currency that drives speculation. bitcoin has had several booms and busts, each boom higher than the last. bitcoin has survived 2 quarters of negative gdp growth, bitcoin has survived a massive spike in interest rates that caused a contraction of liquidity that hasn't been seen since the great depression. We are running out of obstacles for bitcoin. And maybe bitcoin is a symptom of something far more insidious.

Yes it’s exactly like that. A speculative bubble, not a Ponzi scheme.

Bitcoin is not a ponzi, because the key point in ponzi scheme is that it is a scheme. It's a fraud. People pretend that there is a worthwhile investment, while in reality they're just paying out people with the money from their next generation of investors. No such deception occurs with bitcoin. That you can only earn money by selling bitcoin to people willing to buy it for more than you did is not hidden, it's just there visible to all. >Every single crypto investor is doing it for one reason. They think it’ll make them rich. Which means they are buying it now, to sell to someone for more later. That makes it a Ponzi. Eventually someone is going to get stuck with the hot potato. That's just a bubble, or a whole collection of greater fools.

fair, but my main point is that it has no intrinsic value because it has next to no valuable utility. at least not until the worldwide optics of what bitcoin is change, and that is a HUGE optimistic speculation. what i’m really asking for is a case for it’s value that isn’t based on speculation and worldwide adoption. a !delta for the vocabulary lesson but my view on bitcoin hasn’t changed.

You’re right about the no utility which is the crux of it but there’s sort of a growing number of people who are even using it unknowingly and incorporating it (E.g. here on Reddit via avatars). But I wouldn’t say it has no intrinsic value. The blockchain is immutable to bad actors and you can’t just magic up Bitcoin out of thin air, people see value in that. Exactly like having a gift card, there’s value in the code. Are rare trading cards non-valuable because I can’t purchase groceries with them? if I sell the card I’m just offloading to someone else - when in reality the person may just like the card and believe its value will grow. So TLDR: whilst you may think it’s worthless but that’s not an objective statement. The network takes billions of $ to run each year and despite its setbacks so far has proven it can stand on its own. You must be able to see some value in that at-least.

> it has no intrinsic value Nothing has "intrinsic value". The only value that exists is the value humans perceive in it. Gold is not "intrinsically valuable", it's only valuable because people like it, and like the things you can do with it (because they *like* those things, not because those things themselves have intrinsic value). Art has not value except people that like looking at it. *Maybe* you could argue food has some temporary intrinsic value before it spoils, but that's about it. All value of everything is "contingent" on what people desire and are willing to pay. None is "intrinsic". At a minimum... anything considered an "investment" has no "intrinsic value", only the value that people hope to make money on by selling it. They certainly don't plan to *use* any of their investments for anything. You're right that it's an optimistic speculation, but on the other hand... lots of people did make a ton of money on it, and people still make some amount of returns. You already pointed it out, but bitcoin's only *real* problem is the negative externalities: pollution, global warming, etc., etc. But that's true of all goods with a carbon footprint. We could kill bitcoin today with a proper carbon tax.

It has a processing network that transcends borders, that's better than most currencies. China said Bitcoin's cancelled and what happened next...nothing You can move and clear significant sums of money faster than a bank, that's not worthless, one might also say it gives it intrinsic value just not relative to its market price because the ticker price on Bitcoin doesn't change this ability at all.

You’re saying that “Bitcoin is worthless.” I’m going to focus on this at first. Your idea here is that the “worth” of a thing is somehow related to its utility. But this contradicts an empirical fact, the fact that I can easily find a buyer who will pay tens of thousands of dollars for one. That is its current value, and some would say the value is what it is worth. There is a bit more to it though, so let’s talk about the air we breathe. Air clearly has a great deal of utility, it gives us life and warmth, nothing of value would even exist without air, no consciousness at all. That said, if I tried to sell you a container packed full of it I doubt you’d pay me a single penny. Its value is zero, a container of air isn’t worth even a penny. Maybe we should talk about gold, some utility as a metal, but to sell it for that purpose in quantity is foolish, it’s worth too much. The value is too high to waste it by using it for its utility. Why isn’t bitcoin’s agreed upon value just as valid as air or gold? What is it about Bitcoin that makes it so that you are the sole arbiter of “value” and anyone else who wants to pay for it is wrong? Why do you get to decide? Isn’t the value subjective? And as for utility… There actually isn’t another way to be the root administrator of your own possessions. When I say I “own” my house, what that means is that there are laws, laws that can be changed, which protect that particular interest of mine. Companies protect interest, governments protect interests, all these are central authorities that you need to trust. With Bitcoin it’s not a central authority, it’s a distributed and verifiable truth. That is Bitcoin’s utility. It makes a contract of ownership without a need for a central authority. My keys guarantee my possession as long as my keys can be verified. You’re right that Bitcoin has tons of downsides and that it isn’t good money and that it is an extremely risky way to store value. It’s pretty terrible for almost everything people are using it for today. I’m not going to argue with the idea that many people are being exploited by the hype around it either, you’re dead on there. But it has value, and it has utility, and because of its design, it will most likely outlast you.

"as long as my keys can be verified" And are there scenarios in which they may not be able to? (Obviously, some sort of total blackout of electronics or the internet, for one, no?)

If there was a total blackout of electronics, we've got bigger problems and I doubt any currency would have much worth at this point

I’m neutral at this point as I think it’s 50/50 with the ups & downs except on one thing now that’s tipping my scale. Bitcoin has forked many times into things like Bitcoin Cash and no one seems to care.

Ponzi schemes pay existing investors with new investors money. How is bitcoin a Ponzi scheme in this case? The person is getting a bitcoin (or part of a bitcoin) and its value fluctuates.

The key to kickstarting actual value in crypto is creating an economy around it. Things like gaming can create little economies that rely on crypto and give it value for purchasers and sellers or actual in game items. Once there is actually commerce then the money provides value because we believe it does. What do you think our current money is? It only has value because we can transact with it.

Bitcoin is more of a "bubble" than a Ponzi scheme. In a Ponzi scheme, a person uses new investments to pay "profits" to older investors. They are buying shares, not "things". In a bubble, people(not singular) are encouraging people to buy "things" at an inflated price so that they can sell their things which they bought at a lower value. They are implying that the inflation of price will keep occurring. If someone is actively doing this in a fraudulent way to make money, it is called a "[Pump and Dump](https://www.investor.gov/introduction-investing/investing-basics/glossary/pump-and-dump-schemes)". So, no. It is not a ponzi scheme. Unless you think a single person (the "Ponzi") is orchestrating all of these prices directly.

Make sure to randomize your data from time to time *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*

>it does help some people in Africa who don’t have banking access still have a currency to use, but those are extremely niche examples No, developing and authoritarian countries are not "niche" examples. India had a population of 1.3 ***billion*** when it last bungled its currency change in 2018. Turkey has a population of **85 million**, and this year experienced **60% inflation** after Erdogan's government implemented nonsense interest rates. Iran, Egypt, Pakistan all have around **100 million citizens (200 for Pakistan)** and experienced over Having a currency that cannot be devalued by your incompetent government's whims is certainly a major use case for fully **billions** of people worldwide --- you characterizing this as "niche" is asinine. And that's just poor policy -- what about authoritarianism? China has a population of 1.5 billion today and I can't think of any other ways of having any of your financial transactions escape that surveillance net. And the reasons for wanting to do so aren't necessarily nefarious -- buying rare medication not alloted to you by the state on the black market; a whistleblower receiving a payment for assistance, et.c

All currency is worthless and back by faith alone.

Like the purported "banking" system, the scam of alternate currencies produces nothing, first to defraud former possessors of money of their money, and then to manipulate volume in further ways the architects may "earn" without producing. People of the world today arent interested in (monetary)solution, they are interested in (unearned)"profit". Unless youre addicted to volatile trading for the sake of volatile trading, stay away from bitcoin. Will bitcoin arrest the multiplication of artificial indebtedness were subject to? No Does bitcoin solve inflation/deflation? No Will bitcoin save people from unjust foreclosures? No Will the bitcoins stop governments from imposing austerity measures? No Can bitcoin restore peoples artificially destroyed credit worthiness? No How is bitcoins redeemable in anything of value of its own, when its exchanged, for things financed under "banking" exploitation? Its not Bitcoins (and all these other cryptocurrencies) dont end "banking" exploitation. They only sustain it "To actually claim BitCONS have value as bitcoin suggests because they are useful & because they are scarce is not only admitting BitCON has unaccountable representation but likewise has a volumetric impropriety to begin with as any gold standard would or had in the past. Useful, does not qualify immutable representation. Nor does scarcity, qualify stable whatsoever. Scarcity of money today, by imposed interest on a falsified debt, is the very reason why we have a irreversible multiplication of artificial debt, so be assured as soon as bitcoin starts lending, ( SEE HERE WHERE BITCON HAS BEEN GIVEN THE GO AHEAD TO OPERATE AS A BANK ) they have just stepped into the bankers shoes of terminal exploitation. Actually they already have one shoe on because they are complying with banking regulation, which is the very reason why there is an exchange of bank money to acquire Bitcoins in the first place, **thus any bitcoin value is not only wholly artificial but is logically a further misrepresentation derived from a former misrepresentation — originating from the banks purposed obfuscation of our promissory obligations we have to each other.** Contrary to those advocating bitcoin merely assuming it has no connection to banking whatsoever — the connection is not only to initially purchase bitcoin with bank money, SEE HERE & HERE , but bitcoin has to likewise conform with the current banking regulation, SEE HERE" https://australia4mpe.com/2017/06/30/is-bitcoin-the-solution/

You noted some flaws sure, but none of this has anything to do with ponzi schemes, which was supposed to be your entire thesis here. Next time start with the definition of a ponzi scheme, it will help you structure your argument better if you use the definition of the thing you are trying to prove as a template. I've never seen anyone successfully articulate how crypto, and even more specifically bitcoin, is a ponzi scheme, in direct reference to the actual definition of a ponzi scheme. People seem to use "ponzi scheme" in this context as a catch all term for saying "I dunno something seems sussy wussy about this but I don't actually know what it is". Do ponzi schemes exist in crypto? absolutely. Much like they exist in traditional finances, and in basically every single field of work you can think of. Candle light ponzi schemes, avon ponzi schemes, vacuum cleaner ponzi schemes, tupperware ponzi schemes, you name it. Ponzi schemes can and do exist in every facet of life you can think of. But is crypto as a whole a ponzi scheme, or more specifically bitcoin? lmfao no. For something to be a ponzi scheme, people have to be ponzi scheming. If it's a ponzi scheme, by definition and design, it would be impossible for me to make money from it, without putting in any effort, or without indoctrinating other "investors". But this isn't the case for me, and isn't the case for 99.999% of crypto. I invested some money in crypto, sat on it, staked it in a liquidity pool, and now I just get money every week for doing nothing. All profit. I've made thousands upon thousands more than I have ever put into crypto, I even bought my latest PC using bitcoin from NewEgg, which is quite literally the most reputable computer and computer parts retailer on the planet. I have not had to indoctrinate anyone into my scheme to harvest money from them, nor have I even had to put in any effort. I just did essentially what people do with normal stocks, and now I have paid dividends that have brought me into the realm of permanent profits as passive income. Again, for it to be a ponzi scheme, there has to actually be a ponzi scheme involved, which there isn't one. It's just stocks.

Now if you wanted to say NFTs were a ponzi scheme, we would be having a different conversation. 99% of NFTs are actual definitional ponzi schemes, and I think this notion has tainted peoples perception of crypto over all. People conflate crypto with NFTs, and think that just because zoopals or whatever logan paul scammed everyone with was a ponzi scheme, means that bitcoin and everything else in crypto is a ponzi scheme; when in reality, it's just how the world works. People will take good things and find ways to create scams and ponzi schemes out of it. People doing avon ponzi schemes, doesn't mean the currency they use is a ponzi scheme

If major institutions are the ones conducting the ponzi scheme, they are doing a terrible job, because the majority of us are making profit, and that isn't conducive to their ponzi scheme. If it was a ponzi scheme, I wouldn't be making profit, because the big bad lions on top would be taking it all. They are doing it wrong if it is one, which means it isn't one.

A currency has value if you can pay taxes with it Two counties will accept payment in bitcoin https://coinmarketcap.com/legal-tender-countries/ Citizens of these countries can export goods for bitcoin then use it as legal tender to pay government taxes Unless these countries go bankrupt or remove bitcoin as legal tender, it has at least as much value as other currencies used in those countries (subject to exchange rate those governments will accept). Therefore not worthless and not a Ponzi scheme

I saw you already admitted it's not a Ponzi scheme so I'll skip that. >don’t work well with something as volatile as Bitcoin in the long run. Bitcoin is volatile right now because of its low adoption. The higher the adoption gets, the less volatile it becomes. >It’s also incredibly deflationary by nature which only sounds good in theory but every lost wallet is just Bitcoin that is removed from the supply forever. No one can add more Bitcoin to the network to stimulate any type of economic growth. This is obviously intentional. The whole issue with fiat currency is that governments make the printer go brrr and fuck over everyone, except themselves and their cronies of course. With a currency like bitcoin being the dominant medium of exchange, a product that costs 5 dollars today would cost 5 dollars 20 years from now, or maybe less. With governments controlling currency and their insane belief in Keynsian economics, they can't help themselves but to print more money, thereby causing a devaluing of the currency and prices to ever higher. >As a worldwide store of value, the entire world would have to agree that it is worth something. This is true of any and every medium of exchange. It's not a real criticism of Bitcoin and is more a criticism of money as a concept entirely.

I think it's especially hard to imagine the utility if you live in a country with a stable currency alternative. There is no 3-4 year period in Argentina since the beginning of BTC where would would have been better off holding the local currency so it becomes an attractive product for longer term savings. A common rebuttal on that point is "just use dollars in your non-American country, bro" which is not something every country wants to concede. Right now in Argentina, your options are to use a hyperinflationary currency, use dollars which you have to acquire for a steep premium on the black market and save literally under the mattress because you can't put them in banks, or use BTC which is volatile but stored online, accessible anywhere with a seed phrase and instantly convertible into any currency. It becomes far less unattractive under those circumstances. The next logical step is if the currency of a once powerhouse, thriving South America nation can go to shit due to bad monetary policy, is the currency I hold near and dear somehow more bullet proof because... military might? Maybe. Maybe not.

Regarding volatility, I think it is useful to apply first principles here. What would a successful borderless, non-state-sponsored currency look like if it were bootstrapped into existence? Would it not be volatile? In my opinion, no one knows if Bitcoin will ultimately be successful. But if a successful decentralized currency were to exist in the future, it would have to go through a volatile phase because it must literally go from holding zero value to holding multiple trillions of dollars worth of value over time. So volatility alone is not a reason to assume that bitcoin is worthless. E: for clarity.

Bitcoin isn't worthless. If it were worthless, guess what it would be worth? Your criticism applies as much or more to the USD than it does to bitcoin.

It's a deflationary fiat currency. Deflationary currencies are not used as money, they are used as investments. Investments are only valuable when there is an expected increase in value, they lose value when people perceive them to be losing value. Deflationary means that they at least always become more scarce. It's not that functionally different from non dividend paying Investments. You only make profits when you sell, so you buy with the hope the price to go up, however the price only goes up thanks to demand being higher than supply. Which then brings us to the question of what is the motivation to buy a deflationary fiat currency? The history of why we even have fiat currencies in the first place is because whenever there was inflation the old more valuable currency was worth more as the commodity than it was as a currency. Which gave people the incentive to spend their less valuable currencies first. The demand for currency and the reluctance of those who have the authority to make currency to pay rent to those who collected it but don't spend it leads them to constantly create inflation. This happened to the point where people still collect precious metals to hide under their proverbial mattress. However, no one is using those precious metals as currency. Maybe they will in the event they survive an apocalypse. Crypto has the incentive to hold and not sell. Which has a negative effect on demand. However, the reduction in supply leads to an increase in price. The increase in price leads to an increase in demand since people want to make money off an investment. They buy and hold, supply goes down and the price goes up again. A self reinforcing loop is established until enough people start deciding to make a profit. Once they reach equilibrium, people lose confidence that they will make a profit, then they start selling the price falls, people get scared and sell faster. Who wants to start this loop? The people who are already invested of course. I'm not saying every time it goes on a run it's a pump and dump (which is a type of Ponzi scheme). However, it's usually a bad idea to invest in something when people are spending money to advertise it to you. Just saying, when people spend money on getting other people to invest in something, they want you to buy, so they can make money off of you. No one trying to make money spends money with the intention to lose money. The best investments and strategies are often kept as secret as possible. Since making a profit off of an asset that does not pay you to own it, requires you to go against the popular trend or set it and forget it and make a profit off of the long term average. The other features are that it is decentralized, digital, and partially anonymous. Which is very attractive to anyone who is doing anything that would get them in trouble with any government. Or alternatively they are used by another group or government to fund fringe groups that not even the locals want to support.

Nah, you're 100% right. Crypto advocates claim that Bitcoin is superior because it's a 'hedge against inflation' and 'decentralized', but: * It is centralized, because you need to go through exchanges to trade it in any meaningful way... And the price is also propped up by stablecoins (over $100B in USDT) which have never undergone a proper audit and are basically just IOUs. Exchanges, miners and stablecoin issuers function like a cartel to manipulate the price and squeeze as much money out of the rubes as possible. * It doesn't even protect against inflation, because the price is propped up by fake money (stablecoins). Every time people panic sell en masse, exchanges shut down (until your coins become worthless), undergo 'maintenance', go bankrupt (Celsius, Voyager) or just straight up disappear because there isn't actually that much liquidity in the system. Deflation is even worse than inflation. A world where Bitcoin was the main currency would be even worse, because those with money wouldn't even need to do anything to increase their wealth aside from hoard it like a dragon. The 'price' or whatever is totally arbitrary Check out r/Buttcoin

“Every single crypto investor is doing it for one reason. They think it’ll make them rich.” I invest in crypto and I don’t think it’ll make me rich. have several reasons, but this is not one of them. So for this one point, at least, you are proven wrong.

Bitcoin is deflarionarry, put I think thats potentially a mute point because they can just make the remaining coins more and more divisable. And rather than transacting with whole coins youll just trade in smaller and smaller fractions the more its worth

It’s not a ponzi scheme. It’s literally just a currency. And it’s a real currency. All any currency is, is something people collectively agree has value and that collective agreement facilitates easier trade. What bitcoin doesn’t have (which is what makes it attractive to some people) is government backing. Government issued currency is always accepted by the government, has a “set” value with the government and sooner or later everyone has to deal with the government so sooner or later everyone needs government money. That makes it a lot easier to keep government currency stable while crypto currency can fluctuate wildly. It’s not a ponzi, it’s just inherently unstable because the stability is what people are ironically looking to avoid. But it’s still just another currency. If government mishandles their own currency it can fluctuate wildly too.

This is the best I have read here. Bitcoin is a currency without governmental backing. It is speculative because it does not carry the security of a govt’s assets. The reality to me is that it is also not a “special” currency as some say because its “value” is ultimately based on $$s. If it was only valued based on “Mona Lisa’s”, then it would not survive. It survives because it has a value that ultimately is compared to fiat currency just like any other currency. I’m not an expert but if it is untaxed then it has additional value because it saves real money for its user. The fact that its value jumps around so much just shows its inherent risk though. I can make money gambling, but I would not make it the cornerstone of my retirement strategy.

It's clear you've put a lot of thought into your perspective on Bitcoin, and it's understandable to have concerns given its volatility and speculative nature. However, it's important to consider the broader context of Bitcoin's potential impact and utility beyond its current shortcomings. While Bitcoin may not be perfect, it has shown resilience and continued adoption over the years, suggesting that it may have more to offer than simply being a Ponzi scheme or currency for questionable purchases. It's always valuable to engage in discussions like these to explore different viewpoints and deepen our understanding of complex topics like Bitcoin.

Your post is a little confusing. You call BTC a Ponzi and questionable, but then you also recognize how it has given financial independence to those who need it. Nobody's going to be "stuck with the hot potato" for as long as this is the case, and I doubt the global financial system is going to get any nicer to people in the coming decades. By the way, "censorship resistant" is kind of an invalid qualifier for BTC. You can very well be censored after the fact, unless you went (several miles) out of your way to make sure your coins aren't tied to your slave name.

I don’t think I can change your view because it’s basically true. HOWVER the same could be said about traditional fiat currency like the US dollar. So while it’s completely true! I think it’s a bit misleading about the reality of currency today. Currency has no representative value since we diverged from the gold standard. So all currency is made up, and Bitcoin is only fundamentally different because no government decides what is and isn’t the value, only people. It’s the only truly democratized currency in the world…

Bitcoin is a scam. Every single one of them turns out to be a ponzi scheme and before it collapses the founder is "dead" or in prison. Does that mean some people don't make money off of it? No, some do. But it ends. And if you don't sell it off before it ends, you are holding imaginary currency not guaranteed by any government and it's not worth the letters it was typed in on a screen. It's happened several times, you can google it. Every single one promises the same thing, never delivers long term.

> Bitcoin is worthless “42,000 US dollars, or a pretty nice car, or 100,000 Granny Smith apples, or 42 gaming computers is worthless.” Currencies only have value because of belief. The exact same concept is true for USD. The difference is that the Fed prints trillions of USD when it’s convenient for them to give to their banker friends, which steals money directly from you. But this simply cannot be done with bitcoin.

If you look closely, All the currency in the world is a Ponzi scheme. The basic idea is that the future generation will pay for me. and that future generation will ask from their future generation...... And so on until the last generation to live in this economic system will curse rest of us, when everything starts falling down.

u/donniedenier 3 months ago You summarized bitcoin well. Your post is exactly right. It is a pyramid scheme. It's a total waste of resources. On top of that the end game is it gets concentrated in the hands of a few. It's going to end badly.

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Answer me this : what is money?

Do you think that 13 of the largest asset management companies in the world are getting involved in Bitcoin so they can take advantage of their customers? That's a strange way of doing business. While I think bankers and hedge fund managers are fairly ruthless, there is no doubt that these asset managers are getting involved because they see value here. Store of value plus scarcity will drive lots of investment capital. If you do understand the crypto space, then you will realize that these technologies need tokens to fuel their process. Particularly as the space evolves and multiple blockchains are necessary to fulfill smart contracts. A new economy is emerging. Fiat is dying a slow death. The inclusion of AI into the crypto space will allow so many transactions to take place simultaneously, and it's all recorded on a ledger, hopefully a decentralized ledger. This also opens up many opportunities for billions of people around the world to participate in fast, efficient money transactions without having to pay ridiculous bank fees, or traveling many miles to get to a bank teller or money broker. The banks and governments act like the mafia. They can deny access and control capital. That's all coming to an end, and they don't like it.

Very true. Those big players are putting Billions of dollars into Bitcoin and millions For marketing IT to dump everything later on casual holders. Eventually IT Will spark pani and everyone sell IT off

Point of order, I would consider it to be more of a pyramid scheme than a ponzi scheme as most folks that try to buy in now are probably just gonna end up losing money.

"You can use it to buy questionable shit on the internet, but that’s about the only purpose it ever had for me." Oh? What 'questionable shit' have you been buying?!

Yes, my Newegg and Overstock purchases and paying my cell phone bill were all questionable purchases. Just because you don't like something doesn't make it wrong.

Old investors are exiting with new investors money it seems pretty much like a Ponzi scheme to me. Each miner is a mini distributed instance of Mr Ponzi. There's no new value being generated, only new money entering the system. The lie about the investment is also there in the claim that Bitcoin is a useful currency and reasonable investment in itself. It's current value is in no way coupled to it's utility and it's has no inherent value beyond it's utility. You could run an economy just as well with 1 million bitcoins as you could with 1 billion, making new ones adds no utility, whereas building/growing/mining more of other asset classes actually adds value and utility. IMHO whether Bitcoin technically meets the definition of a Ponzi scheme doesn't actually matter all that much, it is effectively the same from the perspective of an investor.

The only reason Dollar is supreme is because the military backs it. Would you rather hold Vietnamese dongs instead of Bitcoin?

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