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There have been 12% APY ponzi schemes since time immemorial, and they have been less wasteful of resources than the one you invested in.
by lern_too_spel 5y ago
There have been 12% APY ponzi schemes since time immemorial, and they have been less wasteful of resources than the one you invested in.
- ipnon 5y agoIn the spirit of friendly conversation: Something about a 0.03% repo rate during a year of 7% inflation seems like a Ponzi scheme to me! I am genuinely thankful for the opportunities crypto provides myself and others. Our financial system is in many ways rigged against the little guys. Now there's a chance to turn the tables.
- lern_too_spel 5y agoMy point was that there are plenty of other people running ponzi schemes without crypto waste. You might as well use those.
- brian_cloutier 5y agoBy what definition is crypto a ponzi scheme?
- lern_too_spel 5y agoBy the definition that there is no growth in value of the investment, only new "investors" paying the returns for the people withdrawing.
- brian_cloutier 5y agoIs gold a ponzi scheme? 1. Gold bars are just collections of atoms and always stay exactly how they are, the material never changes, so the intrinsic value of a gold bar never changes. 2. It seems that the only way to make money while trading gold is to take it from other people. The only way to win a return is if a bunch of people suddenly want gold and offer to pay you for yours. Gold, and other commodities, seem to fit your definition.
- Ourgon 5y agoThe perceived value of gold lies in its scarcity, there is only so much of it to go around [1]. No matter how much people may have tried, it is not realistically possible to create more gold. This is not true for cryptocurrencies, the term shitcoin did not come out of nowhere. While there may be artificial scarcity within a single cryptocurrency there is no scarcity of cryptocurrencies. Everyone and (literally - Dogecoin) his dog can launch a new shitcoin and try to dupe investors into driving up its value, if only for a short while. By the time the hype is past those who launched the shitcoin will have cashed out already, making off with a large fraction of whatever they managed to dupe people into investing in the scheme. [1] unless someone takes up asteroid mining, that is...
- brian_cloutier 5y agocrypto is no stranger to shitcoins and to true ponzis, the illegal kind. Unfortunately, shitcoins and ponzis require hype to survive and will generate voluminous amounts of it. This generates a selection effect where most crypto hype will be of the unsavory kind. This can give the impression that all of crypto is a scam, that impression is wildly incorrect. I believe this is the trap that lern_to_spel and many others on HN are falling prey to.
- lern_too_spel 5y agoPeople need gold for its properties. As the number of people grows faster than the available amount of gold, its value goes up. Crypto tokens are not needed for anything because they are inferior to alternatives for all the purposes they have been applied to. More people needing 0 tokens means the value of the tokens should remain 0.
- brian_cloutier 5y agoWell, now you're arguing a different point. Are you saying that your definition of ponzi really included an implicit third term? Ponzis are not ponzis when they involve an asset with intrinsic value? That doesn't seem right. In any case, here's another counterexample. People need ETH for its properties. Ethereum is necessary for payment for the execution of Ethereum smart contracts, which provide a service with no predecessor. You might disagree with me about the utility of the service that they provide, but there really is no pre-crypto smart contract alternative.