Pyramid schemes aren't made up of unscrupulous people. They're made up of fools doing the bidding of the scam's originators.

An unknown person, or entity, known as Satoshi created btc and controls more coins than anyone else. Since btc creation early investors have gone out and recruited more investors, who then went out and recruited even more investors, and so on.

Recently the people near the bottom have been lamenting that there just aren't enough new investors to keep the price going up.

Any chance you could help me out and buy a few coins at market, I promise I won't sell...

I thought blockchain was the technology and Bitcoin an application.

You can send it to an address where a private key doesn't exist. A private key for that address could end up being found, but it's doubtful. On Ethereum check out 0x0000..... there's millions in there.
I'm sure there's a similar one for btc. Alternatively just send to any unused btc address. It's unlikely anyone will ever find a corresponding private key.

In my opinion, something really can't be a pyramid scheme if there is no direct incentive to recruit new members. Merely having the price of the asset go slightly up doesn't really count. In bitcoin (and the vast majority of non-pyramid scheme assets), your marginal gain from recruiting a new investor is extremely low.

Likewise, it's not really a ponzi scheme because it does not guarantee returns nor does it pay any returns.

Not trying to say that it's fairly valued or not, but just calling names of scams that clearly do not apply is not a good argument.

counterparty burn address
https://blockchain.info/address/1Cou...XXXXXXXXUWLpVr

bitcoin eater
https://blockchain.info/address/1Bit...DontSendf59kuE

11111111111111...
https://blockchain.info/address/1111...111111114oLvT2

etc...

Spreek,

Of course there is direct incentive to recruit new members. The gain for newer investors to recruit is extremely low, I concur. The gain for founding or long time investors to recruit is extremely high. It's almost like a pyramid.

True, btc doesn't guarantee any returns. People touting btc certainly imply huge returns are guaranteed. They also warn of your impending doom, or imminent slavery, if you don't jump on the bandwagon. Of course people buying btc believe it pays returns or 99% of them wouldn't buy it in the first place.

I believe I've laid out some points where btc clearly overlaps in definition w/ scams. If you do a little research you'll see I'm not the only person to see some similarities. Government officials, well known investors, and multiple journalists, have pointed out the similarities.

The fervor with which many bulls defend btc is simultaneously incredibly worrisome and bullish. At the end of the day though, if it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it's probably a genuinely life changing technology about to change the world, by taking back power from government and giving it to the individual, as opposed to a money grab by self serving hustlers.

Yeah putting it into numbers might make it easier for people to understand. If I get two family members in a middle/upper class household to buy bitcoin by convincing them at the dinner table, the value of my bitcoin does go up but only some small theoretical amount, like 0.00000001% or so.

If I get them to invest in a pyramid scheme, their purchase is directly paying for my return. I can get up to 100% instantly.

How much fiat is there in crypto? Wild guess:

Tether (if it's all there) 2.3 billion. This covers all altcoin exchanges.

Bitmex 0. No real money here at all.

Korean exchanges 2 billion? This is a closed system so it has a lot less impact.

Fiat exchanges, Gemini, Coinbase, Stamp etc. 5 billion between them?

Gambling sites etc. <1 billion (FT went down with 450 mil liabilities)

Institutions, large OTC traders. 3-5 billion?


This is about 10-12 billion or so total.

You could say that but Bitcoin was developed along with blockchain as we know it, so phrasing it that way makes it seem like it was an afterthought.

Yup, correct. The proper term is bubble. A bubble is different from a Ponzi and a pyramid scheme.

An example of a crypto coin that would be a Ponzi scheme is BitConnect.

Even a crap altcoin isn't considered a Ponzi scheme. It could be considered a scam, but a Ponzi scheme means you profit off of other people's money and not from the investment itself. Bitcoin is decentralized so it can't possibly be a Ponzi scheme. There is no specific individual or entity that determines what you get paid out by. Your payout, if you choose to sell, will equate to what the market values it at.

2018 and we are debating wether bitcoin is a ponzi. Talking about a 9 years Bubble start to get ridiculous but seriously a ponzi...

That's very debatable. At the very least Bitcoin is an application of more technologies, like proof of work, and public key cryptography. I would say that Bitcoin is the technology that combines the technologies it makes use of in the way it does. Perhaps that combination is what you refer to when you say blockchain.

What?! HLF is absolutely a pyramid scheme. It's now acquiring heavy debt to buy back stock as its profits fall in order to prop up its share price. It's going bankrupt in <5 years, perhaps <3

Yeah that was so ridiculous I didn't even know what to say to it. It's pure pyramid scheme ass-covered with supposed product purchases and channel purchases. The whole was a sword fight (the homoerotic kind) between Ackman and Icahn. Icahn pumped billion in and short squeezed the crap out of Ackman repeated until he capitulated and lost many of his clients.

I think there's an important distinction between a pyramid scheme/ponzi scheme and what's happening with crypto (assuming you're a skeptic, as I am):

With pyramid schemes and ponzi schemes, you need money actually flowing in to the enterprise in order for that money to flow back out to the scammers. That is, scammers can only get richer by $X if non-scammers inject >=$X into the system.

That's not the case with cypto currency; dollars flowing into the system don't mechanically increase the value of crypto. Similarly, increases in the value of crypto aren't necessarily evidence of fiat money flowing in. You can have dramatic increases in price without much fiat movement if most hodlers are unwilling to sell. This can lead to dramatic differences between money flow and changes in market cap.

Suppose there are about 16,000,000 bitcoins currently out there, and the current price is $6,750. That gives you a market cap of $108 billion. That doesn't mean that people have invested $108 billion in fiat into bitcoin. And, if you're thinking about the likelihood of bitcoin going to $50,000, it doesn't mean that investors will have to invest ~$700 billion in fiat for that to happen. All the hodlers in the world could collectively decide that they will absolutely not sell bitcoin for any price less than $50,000, and all it would take is one headstrong "buy at any price" person to purchase a single bitcoin at $50,000. That single $50,000 injection would lead to an increase in market cap of $700 billion.

Now, I think most of this is obvious, and it's just a long-winded way of saying that liquidity matters. But I often see people confusing volume, money flow, and prices, and I don't think that's a good thing.

If it was Ponzi, it would have died out completely, during one of the many many corrections it has had in the past. Because, thats what happens to Ponzis. A Ponzi has very very little resistance to zero.

Man what happened right at that drop today? That's the kind of gap you see during a macro announcement for stocks. What I MISS?

I'm not an expert, but it seems like just a pump and dump, Same type of stuff that's been happening the last few months during this bear market.

I read somewhere that someone sold 12k bitcoins on bitfinex.

Recent 2+2 fud obviously

. I'm still optimistic. MOOOOOOOOON

Without trying to get into spotting flying monkies and poop in the shape of Trump on a chart, if you look at the BTC chart for the last month, it's lower highs and lower lows right?

I don't trade like that, but that's often the sign of a bottom at least in the short term, right? Curious to see if that plays out.

Why would that be the sign of a bottom? Sounds more like a downward trend to me.

If you believe in bitcoin it's a great time to trade it. I'm shorting the s**t out of it and accumulating as much as I can out of it in hopes that there is a reversal at some point.