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by ericwooley 1859 days ago
Read up on what a ponzi scheme actually is. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/ponzischeme.asp#:~:text....

I'm so tired of people saying crypto is a ponzi scheme.

Maybe you think it's nonsense, or a bad investment, but it is not a ponzi scheme.

> A Ponzi scheme is an investment fraud in which clients are promised a large profit at little to no risk. Companies that engage in a Ponzi scheme focus all of their energy into attracting new clients to make investments. This new income is used to pay original investors their returns, marked as a profit from a legitimate transaction.

3 comments

Well, it's not a ponzi scheme. It's a MLM/pyramid style scheme. The idea over the long term is that there are more future investors than past investors and therefore there will be more money in the future than in the past. However, returns only last until growth limits have been reached. The problem is that everyone who buys Bitcoin wants those gains but they are exclusionary/rivalrous by definition.
By that definition any stock that doesn't pay a dividend is a pyramid scheme. Of course, if you believe it has no value whatsoever, then anything can be seen as a pyramid scheme.
I was going to make a similar comparison. I casually invest and trade crypto and stocks, I have been burnt when early adopters sell off after a company releases a good announcement. After a good announcement, new investors will buy and early investors sell off at their expense, I've seen this result in a stock losing more than 40-50% of it's price, sometimes it will never recover. I think both markets are affected by similar forces.
Naturally occurring Ponzi scheme is the term of art:

https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/19358

Exactly. You might think crypto is worthless or a fad or whatever.

But it is by definition not a "ponzi scheme" or "scam".