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12 years and counting, is that some sort of record for a ponzi scheme where people have been saying it's a ponzi scheme from the beginning? I wonder when they'l

12 years and counting, is that some sort of record for a ponzi scheme where people have been saying it's a ponzi scheme from the beginning? I wonder when they'll realize it might be something else.

Macha 5y ago
https://www.therichest.com/nation/10-of-the-biggest-ponzi-schemes-in-history/ https://www.therichest.com/nation/10-of-the-biggest-ponzi-sc... 15 years for number 2. Madoff was first investigated in 1992 and shut down in 2008 for 16 years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madoff_investment_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madoff_investment_scandal
- inter_netuser 5y ago
  Ponzi and pyramid schemes are materially different. Madoff was paying cashflows to his clients. Bitcoin pays nobody. What are the longest running pyramid schemes? Gold sees to be running for nearly 5000 years, seems like plenty of runway here.
Barrin92 5y ago
nope. You might be interested in Gregor MacGregor who sold many people land to the non-existent country of Poyais for billions in today's dollars, and even when people started to die after arriving in the middle of nowhere the few who made it back to the UK defended him. And he even managed to pull that con off more than once. https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20160127-the-conman-who-pulled-off-historys-most-audacious-scam https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20160127-the-conman-who-p...
- cinntaile 5y ago
  Someone managed to con people by selling them land that doesn't exist. I don't see the relevance? If you buy bitcoins they may be useless in the future. There is no promise whatsoever that they will be worth something in the future and that is the big difference. Nobody gets conned. During the past 12 years it has gone up and it has gone down, a ponzi doesn't tend to revive itself after it gets discovered and they're forbidden by law. Whichever way bitcoin goes in the future nobody knows. There are definitely ponzi schemes within the crypto sphere but bitcoin isn't one of them. BitConnect was such an example and so was OneCoin, there are probably more recent ones as well but it's not something I keep track of.
  - Barrin92 5y ago
    >There is no promise whatsoever that they will be worth something in the future and that is the big difference. Nobody gets conned Of course there is, that's what the Brazilian guys in the article we're commenting on were arrested for. Schemes worth 5 billion in total that included false promises of delivering monthly returns of 10% on bitcoin 'investments'. Pretty much the entire value of countless of coins, nfts or other largely imaginary financial products is a game of bigger fool. People paying tens of thousands for NFTs of pictures or tweets makes no more sense than that old scam of buying an acre of land on the moon or of an imaginary country. And of course the other big similarity is the shared psychological reaction. Rather than people waking up to the fact that they're entangled in increasingly bizarre financial transactions, the rationalizations for the behavior become weirder and weirder.
    - cinntaile 5y ago
      I replied to a statement claiming bitcoin is a ponzi scheme. Bitcoin doesn't have such a promise. Sure someone can come and claim this for dollars as well, but that doesn't make the dollar a ponzi scheme either.

12 years and counting, is that some sort of record for a ponzi scheme where people have been saying it's a ponzi scheme from the beginning? I wonder when they'll realize it might be something else.

Macha 5y ago

https://www.therichest.com/nation/10-of-the-biggest-ponzi-schemes-in-history/ https://www.therichest.com/nation/10-of-the-biggest-ponzi-sc... 15 years for number 2. Madoff was first investigated in 1992 and shut down in 2008 for 16 years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madoff_investment_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madoff_investment_scandal

inter_netuser 5y ago
Ponzi and pyramid schemes are materially different. Madoff was paying cashflows to his clients. Bitcoin pays nobody. What are the longest running pyramid schemes? Gold sees to be running for nearly 5000 years, seems like plenty of runway here.

Barrin92 5y ago

nope. You might be interested in Gregor MacGregor who sold many people land to the non-existent country of Poyais for billions in today's dollars, and even when people started to die after arriving in the middle of nowhere the few who made it back to the UK defended him. And he even managed to pull that con off more than once. https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20160127-the-conman-who-pulled-off-historys-most-audacious-scam https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20160127-the-conman-who-p...

cinntaile 5y ago
Someone managed to con people by selling them land that doesn't exist. I don't see the relevance? If you buy bitcoins they may be useless in the future. There is no promise whatsoever that they will be worth something in the future and that is the big difference. Nobody gets conned. During the past 12 years it has gone up and it has gone down, a ponzi doesn't tend to revive itself after it gets discovered and they're forbidden by law. Whichever way bitcoin goes in the future nobody knows. There are definitely ponzi schemes within the crypto sphere but bitcoin isn't one of them. BitConnect was such an example and so was OneCoin, there are probably more recent ones as well but it's not something I keep track of.
- Barrin92 5y ago
  >There is no promise whatsoever that they will be worth something in the future and that is the big difference. Nobody gets conned Of course there is, that's what the Brazilian guys in the article we're commenting on were arrested for. Schemes worth 5 billion in total that included false promises of delivering monthly returns of 10% on bitcoin 'investments'. Pretty much the entire value of countless of coins, nfts or other largely imaginary financial products is a game of bigger fool. People paying tens of thousands for NFTs of pictures or tweets makes no more sense than that old scam of buying an acre of land on the moon or of an imaginary country. And of course the other big similarity is the shared psychological reaction. Rather than people waking up to the fact that they're entangled in increasingly bizarre financial transactions, the rationalizations for the behavior become weirder and weirder.
  - cinntaile 5y ago
    I replied to a statement claiming bitcoin is a ponzi scheme. Bitcoin doesn't have such a promise. Sure someone can come and claim this for dollars as well, but that doesn't make the dollar a ponzi scheme either.