[blagie]

Not quite a pyramid scheme.

The basic scheme is:

* Issue crypto pegged to the dollar

* Hold interest-generating reserves

* Collect interest

I externalize risk, but it's a relatively low risk. That's different from a pyramid scheme.

Low risk isn't the same as unimportant risk. The whole point of crypto is to mitigate very similar sorts of systemic risks. Cash works pretty well most of the time.

[ric2b]

Sounds really close to a bank, without being one.

[blagie]

You're right. A lot of crypto schemes are very close to classical, preregulation banks.

Early banks issued IOUs for deposits. At some point, traders started swapping bank IOUs in lieu of moving gold, since slips of papers were easier-to-handle and equivalent.

At some point after that, bankers noticed they could lend out the gold for a profit.

Fast-forward a few hundred years, and the central bank issues IOUs in the form of dollar bills, and no one else is legally permitted to mint currency. As of a half-century ago, those are no longer backed by gold. Banks, in turn, handle deposits as bits on a computer (which are even more convenient than paper), backed by worthless slips of US-issued paper. Only the US doesn't even bother printing much of the paper anymore, since it's "deposits at the fed."

I wonder if we're heading for a similar path? Government bans the use of non-sanctioned cryptocurrency, like it once did with bank-issued bank notes, and issues it's own cryptocurrency? It kinda makes sense, since it wants to be able to adjust money supply in the public (or political) good.