There is a big difference between crypto and classical ponzi schemes, that doesn't seem big at first sight but actually is big. To use ETF terminology, the clas

There is a big difference between crypto and classical ponzi schemes, that doesn't seem big at first sight but actually is big. To use ETF terminology, the classical ponzi scheme distributes by default, while crypto accumulates by default. As in, classically a ponzi scheme is a deal where someone convinces you to "invest" into their scheme and you get (usually high) dividends in return regularly. On the other hand, crypto is an speculative investment where you bet on price increases. The difference might seem little because it's just a detail in how you get your payout, right? And indeed, if the two were legitimate investments, there would not be much of a difference (outside of details like taxation). However, the default dividend based payment puts the classical ponzi scheme into a challenging situation compared to crypto. The person running the scheme has to serve the payments otherwise their scheme collapses, which means they have to grow, and find new people to invest in. As the dividends are usually high to motivate people to invest, you usually have really fast exponential growth. With simple calculations you can obtain a date limit at which the scheme has to have collapsed. Compare this to crypto where the (group of) people running the NFT/token/etc. only have to keep enough people to HODL. This is a much easier task, as people who own crypto for investment purposes already believe that it's a good investment so why not keep the "dividends" inside. Thus, there is no requirement for crypto to grow indefinitely in terms of real revenue. At the exchanges, you can in fact have the same revenue in terms of dollars for years but for decreasing numbers of your cryptocurrency and arrive at a positive story for your token. Ultimately, there is no law that the fake currency has to collapse, and in fact if people continue believing in it, it won't. However, as there is no "real" value behind it, its value is 100% made up of speculation, which makes it extremely dangerous for investors (speculators/gamblers is probably a better word to describe them). It's a giant bubble and one day it will pop. Hopefully it won't take large parts of the economy down, but the total size of the bubble is already larger than the one that caused the 2007/2008 crash.