| You get dividends from stocks, so new investors is not the only way. Stocks that don't pay a dividend have promise of paying one in the future as their cash flows grow. That's the fundamental basis to all stock valuation. It's why people talk about P to FCF, PE, PS ratios. For growth stocks, hypothetically, how much in dividends could I get 30 years from now? It's true that many investors don't consider what the fair value actually is, but that's how you end up in a bubble and the price disconnecting from the fundamentals never lasts forever. Real estate more obvious and direct via rents. But yeah, pump and dump kind of stocks where they far exceed their fundamental value are similar. We can argue semantics and what defines a Ponzi scheme, all I'm saying is that crypto largely has no intrinsic value. Any value that's explained is always self referential in terms of other crypto. Bitcoin has some small intrinsic value for illicit payments, or hedging inflation in countries without capital markets. You could argue the net intrinsic value is negative due to the environmental costs though. But outside of edge/fringe cases, all valuation relies on a greater fool effectively. Even gold is still majority used for industrial purposes, despite also being seen as an investment vehicle. |