[mywittyname]

No. Apple stock returns profits to investors. While it's possible to also profit on speculation of future profits, that's not the sole, or even primary reason for investing in it. The primary reason for buying Apple stock is for a share of profits.

> but there are plenty that don't.

Bull. The BTC community as a whole, are evangelists and will point out the multitude of reasons why the price of BTC will trend toward infinity. It's no surprise that, as the financial institutions get more invested into BTC, Bloomberg, et. al. report more on how the price keeps going up! Because the only way to make money on BTC is to find someone willing to pay more than you did for one.

Apple could literally pay a $50/share dividend. BTC could never do that.

I'm not saying a pyramid scheme is a metaphor for BTC, I'm saying it is an instance of pyramid scheme in action. It's just a more modern evolution. The creators were smarter and covered their asses: making it a brand, not a company, hiding their identities, making it pseudo-anonymous.

[coryfklein]

> returns to early investors are generated by contributions from new investors.

This is literally true about Apple stock. If I bought $10 of Apple stock 10 years ago I sell it for $84 today, my $74 return is generated by the contributions of new investors.

Yes, I would also have $104 of dividends paid out, but literally 40% of my "profit" comes from contributions of new investors. So does that make Apple stock a pyramid scheme? NO!

[mywittyname]

Your profit came from an increase in the profits of the company. The company chose to reinvest some of those profits instead of paying it to you, which further increases profits, thus increasing the inherent value of the stock.

That's the difference. Apple generates revenue, BTC does not. If every BTC generated money, then this wouldn't be an issue. But since BTC can't generate money, the only way to profit from it is to get someone else to pay more than you did for it when there's no fundamental reason to do so.

Plus, it can't last forever, like gold can. It has no use like corn does. You literally just buy bits in a distributed database, tell people how it's will be worth infinity dollars because there's only 21 million of them, then sell them for more than you paid. And repeat until you have infinity dollars or the bits are worth less than you paid for them.