The authors postulates for classifying Bitcoin as a ponzi is a follows. 1. People invest into it because they expect good profits, and 2. That expectation is

The authors postulates for classifying Bitcoin as a ponzi is a follows. 1. People invest into it because they expect good profits, and 2. That expectation is sustained by such profits being paid to those who choose to cash out. However, 3. There is no external source of revenue for those payoffs. Instead, 4. The payoffs come entirely from new investment money, while the operators take away a large portion of this money. Many other things fit these. Art, Start Ups, Collectable Watches, Non dividend paying stocks, Real estate and many others. But what most people don't understand is that Bitcoin is NOT an investment scheme, you can speculate on its price, But it not designed to be an investment scheme. Bitcoin was meant to be a utility (a peer to peer cash system as Satoshi described), like Oil i.e a platform for anarchist banking. Speculation should be seen only as a by-product use case of bitcoin. Mostly of these angry "Bitcoin is a Scam" blog posts surface when the price skyrockets. From this, I suspect it has more todo with the jealousy of watching people more stupid than you getting rich. Not what Bitcoin actually is. The legacy financial system is rotten beyond repair. We need alternatives that are not run by crooks in good suits.