[HermanMartinus]

Yep, for every person who gains a dollar someone had to lose a dollar. No value was created. In this way crypto is actually a less than zero sum game since some money is always lost to the machine through sending to abandoned wallets, lost private keys, etc. So on average everyone loses.

[MuffinFlavored]

for every buyer that is a seller

if the seller is happy at the price they are selling at and the buyer is happy at the price they are buying at, where does the "someone had to lose a dollar" come from?

if the seller sold to the buyer, then it went up, the only "dollars lost" would be hypothetical opportunity cost had the seller decided to hold instead.

am i missing something?

[grugagag]

Yeah, it’s called greater fool theory for a reason.

[MuffinFlavored]

Is the person who posted this

"Yep, for every person who gains a dollar someone had to lose a dollar. No value was created."

right or wrong?

[HermanMartinus]

Essentially, the only thing that causes the price to go up is new people buying into the market. That's the only "value" here. This is why it's called The Greater Fool's theory, is you keep passing the bag over to the greater fool who will pay more for it than you.

[raincole]

For goods that has utility, like a car, wrong.

For investments of which the only purpose is to make more money, right.

Of course it's not that black and white, since every investment technically has at least two utility purposes: 1) hedging 2) emotional utility (the false hope of getting rich).

[ric2b]

By that logic stocks of companies that don't issue dividends are the same.

[grugagag]

Maybe but in theory those stocks are ‘usually’ tied to some other econmical activity other than mere speculation that the price will go up. In practice though, a lot of stocks have no fundamental value tied to their prices…

[lxgr]

No for-profit company doesn’t either pay dividends or buy back shares forever.

[panarky]

It's only zero sum when the total value of the space is fixed. That's obviously not the case here, since the total value of the space continues to expand.

[PartiallyTyped]

The counter argument is that such cases contribute to scarcity, which reduces supply and therefore those who sell can demand more.

I don’t know though how sound this argument really is as I don’t see what value bitcoin has outside its monetary worth.

Can you really use this stuff? Not really. At best is a difficult to scale — if at all — database for transactions.

Though similar things could be said about paper money as well — that it is nothing but the agreed upon value — but at least that can exchange hands far more easily in a much more scalable and flexible manner.