[njarboe]

Investment used to mean putting up capital to create or own something that, with some work, would return a stream of income. Farmland produces food with the work of farming. A factory produces goods with lots of people working. A mine produces iron or copper with lots of machines and effort. With the financialization of the economy, lots of people are increasing their "wealth" by speculation and skimming a percentage on transactions. When people start believing that speculation is the only form of investing, society is in for a hard fall at some point.

[mrb]

By your definition, this still leaves FX trading as a "pyramid scheme". Trading fiat for fiat doesn't "put up capital to create something".

[matthewmarkus]

In FX trading people are putting up capital to create exchange ratios, which is information. Right now people are putting up capital to determine how much coin issued by a central bank with a "deflationary" bias written in code and run and administered by a collective (i.e., Bitcoin) is worth vis-à-vis USD. Something is most definitely being created.

[mrb]

You seem to be arguing that trading fiat↔fiat is comparable to trading fiat↔BTC. In which case I agree. That's the point I was making.