No they are paid in Ethereum which they then have to sell in order to capture any economic benefit. A dividend paying stock has an actual business that makes a profit and returns profit to shareholders.

What's the difference between getting a dividend in $ vs getting a payout in eth and converting it to $?

If there's no actual business, and they're paying back with stakeholder money with the hopes of further offerings, it's a ponzi.

What is the actual business of fiat that people sell goods for?

Fiat isn't an investment. If all you hold is fiat currency you'll lose purchasing power over time. The equity/debt markets are not ponzi schemes.

So people that do forex trading are investing in ponzis?

Seems like a lot of confusion here... When/IF Ethereum goes to proof of stake you will be paid Ethereum for staking and locking up your coin for some period of time which will secure the network. This is not too different than current bitcoin miners being paid for their proof of computational work. I'm not sure if they will be paid based on transaction fees(which would be like a dividend) or through the creation of new coins (which would be like a company issuing new shares of stock which dilutes current shareholder's value)

The actual "business" of ethereum is keeping a log of transactions which people are obviously willing to pay for otherwise the value of the coin would be zero.

Example: Alice deposits $10 to coinbase in exchange for 0.05 ETH. She moves the coins to her other address for a $1 fee and has 0.045 ETH left which is worth $9. She has made her first ETH transaction and paid Housenuts(who staked his coins) an equivalent $1 fee for doing so. It is not a ponzi. It is a business.

Satoshi kinda ****ed himself. If he ever moved his stash, bitcoin would collapse.

Some strange price action in the cryptos these past few days. Watching for base and then eventually a breakout to new highs

I'm surprised to see you say this given how generally bearish your posts on crypto have been. Do you just think there will be another up cycle in what is still ultimately a giant pump n dump?

Here is my argument as to why BTC has ponzi- like features:

1. The supply of bitcoins is finite.
2. Miners have a very important role - they verify transactions. Without miners, the system collapses.
3. Miners receive a fee for doing this.
4. Due to point 1, the fee decreases exponentially over time.
5. Miners incur costs they need to cover, such as electricity and hardware costs.
6. Given the exponentially decreasing reward for mining, the only way bitcoin is viable is for the price to increase exponentially over the long term. Polynomial increases wouldn't cut it.

It's possible to structure things differently, for example having bitcoins dividing into smaller units and the units retaining the original price. However, it's mathematically the same - the market cap increases exponentially.

It may not technically be a Ponzi-, but requiring exponential growth over the long time is pretty bonkers.

Having said this, I have no idea when the crash is coming.

I don't think you understand how bitcoin mining works. Miners are speculators too. Nothing says they're not allowed to lose money. Nothing says the hash rate has to increase over time. Btc price does not have to increase for bitcoin to be viable long term.

The argument is independent of hash rate - the exponential decrease is to mining rewards. For every 210,000 blocks mined, the reward halves.

http://www.bitcoinblockhalf.com

Miners are indeed speculators. Nothing in my argument denied that.

5) is not true and neither is 6). Miners incur costs that they WOULD LIKE to cover such as electricity and hardware costs. They do not NEED to cover these costs for bitcoin to work. Regarding 6) it is true that

a) the mining block reward in btc decreases over time.

it is not true that

b) bitcoin price must increase over time or
c) bitcoin hash rate must increase over time or
d) amount of USD equivalent spent on bitcoin mining must increase over time or
e) aggregate USD equivalent of bitcoin transaction fees per block must increases over time as a result of more tx/block or higher avg tx fees

in reality over the long term it has been the case that b-e) are usually true, but none of them are required for bitcoin to work.

false

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6. Given the exponentially decreasing reward for mining, the only way bitcoin is viable is for the price of mining to increase exponentially over the long term?

Even if you receive zero new bitcoin from the network, you still receive lots in fees. The price of bitcoin could be very low but if there are millions of tx each earning a penny each (network needs to scale to do this) then the price does not need to continually increase.

Yes, it is fairly obvious that once expansion is capped the fees have to be > (costs of mining) for the network to succeed.

Either that or... altruism...

Maybe mining is the wrong word at that point, but you know what I mean.

Maybe, but that can happen without the price going up, for example by fees going up.

Bitcoin could also change consensus algorithm.