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Wait...what? You’re complaining about VCs pushing vapor while simultaneously admitting you participated in pumping “ponzi-like” schemes on regular people? You
by pembrook 4y ago
Wait...what?
You’re complaining about VCs pushing vapor while simultaneously admitting you participated in pumping “ponzi-like” schemes on regular people?
You do realize those 7 figure returns you made were a direct wealth transfer from later-stage victims of the ponzi to you?
I’m astonished you’re claiming moral superiority over VCs while sitting on wealth you took from thousands of poor people in places like Vietnam, India, Brazil, Nigeria, etc. (whom were all later stage investors in these crypto schemes).
- tim333 4y ago>7 figure returns you made were a direct wealth transfer from later-stage victims of the ponzi to you? That would be true if there is no value in what was sold but taking ETH that he bought for $7, in 2019 when he sold it was about $250 and is now about $1500 so people buying ETH then would have done just fine. Ponzi schemes are cons that collapse, not open source assets that go up for years and years.
- jacquesm 4y agoNot sure about Ether, but there are plenty of people that 'bought in' to the Bitcoin idea and mined some coins early on without 'taking wealth from others'. VCs are in there for entirely different reasons, and 'later stage investors' are always at risk of having their hair cut if what they invest in isn't worth what they paid for it, after all, they too were trying to take money from later day suckers. I never paid a cent for any bitcoin, but I did pay about $100 to my electricity company to mine some just for the heck of it (and ended up giving it all away).
- smallpipe 4y ago> mined some coins early on without 'taking wealth from others' And how exactly did these mined coins become USD ?
- jacquesm 4y agoThey never did. They left me as coins and I got exactly $0 in return. It's called a gift.
- headsoup 4y agoYou still would have given that same gift when Bitcoin was over $50K?
- jacquesm 4y agoYes, that's exactly what I did. And as for virtue signalling, (see sibling comment) I really don't care what you or others think about that.
- aaaaaaaaata 4y agoSo we're all on the same page: You gave away multiple BTC @ > $50kUSD/ea?
- aaaaaaaaata 4y ago
- jacquesm 4y agoThere is some chance you are on the wrong website.
- aaaaaaaaata 4y ago
- aaaaaaaaata 4y agoThere is some chance you are on the wrong website.
- pembrook 4y agoThe miners absolutely are taking wealth from others—-I can’t believe I’m getting sincere pushback about this. The entire value of the Bitcoin you mined came from later stage “investors” in Bitcoin.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- pas 4y agoWealth is not a zero sum thing. Are they getting USD (or drugs, or whatever) for their BTC? yes. obviously. is this good? well, ordering mob hits on some darknet site via BTC is obviously bad, whereas ordering magic mushrooms is much better than funding street gangs. meanwhile burning down the planet just to calculate hashes endlessly? obviously bad.
- readams 4y agoWealth is not zero sum, but Ponzi schemes are. They do not create wealth, but pretend to do so until the scheme collapses.
- anony23 4y agoYes, those poor hedgefunders!
- thematrixturtle 4y agoCrypto is a closed economy. The only way to get USD out is by taking that USD ("wealth") from somebody else who is buying in.
- davidguetta 4y agoBut this is true for any currency
- throwawaymaths 4y agoNo you can also take usd out by printing it, which disproportionately screws the poor.
- mikeyouse 4y agoNah. With ‘real’ currencies, goods and services are available in that currency. I can happily go about my business and transaction entirely in euros if I’m in the EU.
- davidguetta 4y agoSo what about gold ? I'm waiting for your vlog where you go buy a starbuck with a pound of physical gold and they give you change. The point is that when there's liquidity smoewhere (on an exchange), any security have "de facto" act as a "money", or at least a "saving account", because there's always at all an actual value defined by the market. whether it's stock, crypto etc... It doesn't have in practive to be tied to a central bank / governement. Even historically, currencies have existed well before someone tried to regulate them
- aaaaaaaaata 4y agoThis again? Did you miss the last 47 threads where people discussed the real world goods and services they purchase with cryptocurrency?
- mikeyouse 4y ago
- tallanvor 4y agoBut selling those coins is taking wealth from the people buying it, and the problem is that there are plenty of buyers who don't really understand what they're buying - and sure, they share the blame for getting in over their heads, but so do the people who are doing the selling.
- kumarvvr 4y agoVCs are always in for the "gains". What other reason are they in for? Making the world better? Hah ! Frankly, I have lost all respect for all those VCs who invested in crypto companies.
- davidguetta 4y agoEarly investors were excited by the technology, not the promise of quick gains and speculation, like VC nowadays.. that probably where his "superiori moral", provided he meant it that way which I doubt, are. A lot of people think crypto are plain useless but that is just wrong in practice. They are de facto actual "currency", which is already a lot especially for people in third world countries whose national currencies have gone down relatively to the dollar (venezuela, lebanon, turkey). Any of these people have been better off investing in crypto than in their local banks. It's diversification.
- buf 4y agoYes, this. I had to difficult time replying to pembrook because their reply was so venomous that I felt out of breath by just how far off the mark pembrook was to how it was for me in 2017. Crypto in 2017 really felt like the beginning of something big and amazing, like we were going to change the world's currency, solve reputation, etc. Me personally, I've been weathered by the constant fraud. I still 'believe' in it, like I did in 2017, but I don't invest in it.
- prepend 4y agoSeemed like vapor in 2017 to me. I felt bad like it was scamming people who were dumb out of their money. Once I looked at how the prices rose and the at didn’t support the Eth use case, I thought the architecture was stupid or at worst built purposely to have unnecessary scarcity to drive prices up.
- headsoup 4y agoYou mean had been better off, for a little while.
- dboreham 4y agoUnrelated, but: love your music.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- 4y ago
- lfkdev 4y agoAre you trying to say that ehtereum is a ponzi scheme? Do you think Bitcoin is also one? Don't get me wrong, there are alot of scams in the Crypto szene (like in any scene with a lot of money and not much regulation) but there are also legit, interesting projects. And to be clear; Ethereum is of course not a ponzi-scheme.
- headsoup 4y agoDo you think Bitcoin reaching ~$70K was purely legitimate?
- alchemist1e9 4y agoIt’s an interesting question that for me I can’t give an answer because it has be thinking what does “legitimate” mean in the context of a market. What would make a market melt up illegitimate? Traditionally I was taught that pump and dump and painting the tape are illegitimate market behaviors. Otherwise is a mania illegitimate or isn’t it just a natural market phenomenon?
- kumarvvr 4y agoBlockchain is a technology. Crypto curriencies, I will consider them ponzi schemes as long as they are marketed as investments If they are marketed as temporary, volatile, risky currencies, then sure, they are not a scam. The whole crypto industry reeks of sensationalism and trapping gullible idiots who are fed dreams of "returns".
- bnralt 4y agoThey're speculative assets bubbles (hence the enormous price swings). People refer to them as Ponzi schemes because a speculative asset bubble is similar, though the two aren't technically the same thing. But neither are good for the economy, with everyone making money by leaving someone worse off. If you invest in a company you can be investing in a productive asset that will produce more than you put in. You get a cut, but society does as well, and everyone is better off. With crypto, you're getting your money from the person you offload the crypto to. You're richer, they're poorer. They can try to offload it to someone else, but eventually someone will be left holding the bag. Things that can't go on forever, won't. Even in the highly unlikely best case scenario where these assets stabilize at high prices, you're expanding the monetary base and getting your money by inflicting price inflation on the rest of society (the amount of products isn't increased, but the amount of currency trying to get those products will be).