Well, you can also acquire bitcoins through mining them, which substantially benefits the early adopters. 5 hours of human labor deposited into btc _is not_ equ

Well, you can also acquire bitcoins through mining them, which substantially benefits the early adopters. 5 hours of human labor deposited into btc _is not_ equal to 5 hours in the future, because of btc's built-in inflation through increasing the difficulty of mining them. This is why Karl thinks that btc has the markings of a Ponzi scheme. Also, he points out that btc has no method of deflation aside from actually destroying the coins. The section about seigniorage explains his views here and while it's not worded the most clearly I think that it's a reasonable critique. If this were really a method that he felt was viable enough to escape the taxation of inflation through money printing, manipulation of the CPI, etc., then I'm sure Karl would be on board. He has been writing about these exact topics for more than five years now.