[saalweachter]

Eh, crypto is weirder and worse than a Ponzi scheme in a way that deserves its own moniker.

A Ponzi scheme typically involves a small inner circle perpetuating a fraud; even if "everyone knows" it's hinkey, it is ostensibly returning fabulous returns through actual investment/economic activity. Eventually, the insiders stop being able to keep the game going, and go bankrupt, get arrested, flee the country, or some other ignoble end.

Crypto has lost its layer of fraud; it used to be "this thing will be the future of money and therefore have value", but for the last five+ years it's all just been "this will be worth more in the future because people will buy it so you should buy it," a naked Ponzi.

Meanwhile, it is distributed, even if it is highly centralized at every point from mining pools to exchanges. There's no single person who has to go to jail or disappear with his money to collapse the whole system. It's happened dozens of times, and every time it does a new set of criminals steps up to keep the fraud going.

In summary, even if individual enterprises (eg, FTX) are classic Ponzi schemes, crypto as a whole deserves to be the name of its own type of scam.

[wslh]

Just thinking out loud, but the problem I see is that even if you define Bitcoin as a scam, it could very well have been created by Satoshi Nakamoto (or the group behind the name) in good faith. The real issue now lies with the responsibility of companies like BlackRock to clearly and transparently identify what they are selling to the public.

It is also different than a casino: "Even if crypto investing is considered gambling, there is a factor not present in traditional casino games: the time variable of holding. Holding roulette chips has no effect on their value, while in crypto markets, prices change in time. By holding crypto assets for a longer duration, investors can potentially benefit from market fluctuations and price appreciation, making it a unique aspect compared to classic gambling games." [1].

[1] https://www.coinfabrik.com/blog/the-science-of-crypto-asset-...

[southernplaces7]

What you say is complete nonsense of the reactionary kind that pervades on this site against crypto, by which at all costs it has to be defined as a scam, against all normal, rational definitions of the word.

If for whatever reason, something my go up in price because there's demand for it despite widely available and mostly correct information about its utility or lack of it, that's not a scam. This is the case with bitcoin. It's growth has fueled interest in a bit of gambling by members of the public about possible future growth. There's no central party running it as something it isn't or perpetuating a core lie by hiding some key information about what bitcoin really is.

People insisting on buying something despite it having an unstable market value and debatable concrete utility doesn't make that thing fraudulent. A scam requires intent and misdirection, regardless of how you and others who share your view try to redefine the word scam arbitrarily. You might as well also call all forms of speculation a scam by the same ridículous logic.