It's like doing a paper on whether buying Facebook stock or buying Gold or buying foreign currency (i.e. the entire, gigantic, Forex market) is a ponzi scheme.

It's like doing a paper on whether buying Facebook stock or buying Gold or buying foreign currency (i.e. the entire, gigantic, Forex market) is a ponzi scheme. It's simply not. No need to do a paper on that. People saying bitcoin is a ponzi scheme is simply ignorance on the topic. That's not a cuss word by the way, just literal ignorance, the lack of knowledge. And hearing from them is like hearing from someone who thought dinosaurs and humans walked the earth simultaneously at one point, just completely wrong and with no basis in evidence. But easy to throw around as a truth in some communities that care not to explore the topic properly and thoroughly. You'll also not find any government or bank reports on bitcoin being a ponzi scheme. And most modern governments have put a task force on it, most regulatory bodies like say the SEC, and most central banks like say the Bank of England. Bitcoin being a ponzi scheme hasn't come up. For example the World Bank released a report last year saying it wasn't a ponzi scheme. Thing is, bitcoin has at various times in its life been a speculative bubble. Just like stock of Internet companies, housing etc. That bubble can pop (it did in 2014, from $1200 or so down to below $200), and it can continue trading at a more sensible price (about $250 today). It's inherent to bitcoin because it had to start at 0 value, publicly, from day 1, when it had 0 owners and 0 users and 0 investors. And that eventually grew to millions of owners, users, investors, meaning that it grew by a few million x in the past 6 years. That drove up the price. And if you see a price momentum, there will always be times that people buy because they predict the price going up, which reinforces the momentum through speculation to beyond its supposed value. That's when you get a bubble, and then the bubble pops. And 1-2 years later it starts all over again. Over time, as bitcoin becomes more used, its growth rate slows down, and these insane bubbles happen less and with less magnitude. So if you want to write a paper on how bitcoin has had several speculative bubbles, it's probably true. Just look at the past few years. But a ponzi? It's simply not, it's a ridiculous claim.