re: Crypto...how is this not a elaborate Ponzi/pyramid scheme?

I’ll buy/invest in bitcoin/crypto whenever I see a need for it. So far, I’ve gotten through life and have had zero personal need for it. I don’t see what problem it is solving for the vast majority of people.

I keep hearing “muh but the technology behind it. Blockchain!” I’d bet the majority of people that say this don’t even understand the technology or blockchain. They just have heard other people say it and therefore believe it is valuable, but how valuable? Zero clue.
I also hear the “decentralized currency” thesis. I guess this would be a benefit to me if I was a criminal but otherwise the banking system seems to be working just fine for the law abiding citizen.
I also hear the “third world country with no currency” or the “you can send money across the world” argument. Again, how many people are needing to do that on a regular basis? And third world countries gonna third world country. There will be crypto pirates torturing others to get in their crypto wallets, it’s probably already happening.

Fact of the matter is most people are buying it because the US dollars they used to put into it can go up in value and then they are hoping at a future point in time they will sell out and have more US dollars than when they started.
I’ll say this, it is surprising it has sustained this long

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Crypto is no different from modern money: it only has value because enough people says it does. What the frick do you think the “fiat” part of Fiat Currency means?

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Fiat Currency is still backed, issued and regulated by government or central banks which crypto is not.

It is also recognized as legal tender by governments which crypto may not and varies where it is recognized. Crypto has little regulatory oversight which makes it more risky.

Smells like 99 .com bubble to me

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Now do the US dollar.

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I can purchase items necessary for survival with my US dollars. The only thing I can do with crypto is trade it and make more, you guessed it, US dollars

I would like to help. But can you give me a baseline so I can know where to fill in the gaps. What is your current understanding of how bitcoin works?

A lot of it is essentially buying stock in tech startups.


A lot of it is garbage.

Then there's bitcoin which is a lot more complicated.

Stock in the company doesn’t go up unless people buy it.

It was always weird to me that a lot of libertarian/goldbug types who don't trust the Fed and its digital printing press moved to something even more digital/intangible.

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Life is a ponzi. We’re all trying to make money off the next sucker. Accept it and play the game.

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I used to tell myself stuff like that too. You’re probably going to lose a lot of money. If

First it was a peer to peer decentralized currency to buy drugs on sites like the silk road. It was pretty good at that and the maximum 7 transactions per second was not a problem.

Then some scammers started creating exchanges or otherwise known as casinos where they could rig the game against all their traders and make bank on transactions fees. So the hype bubble came and it would change the world. Everything on Blockchain,. Then came the derivatives including grouping where people actually thought there was a market for lending crypto.

That was a lie and all of them were pure ponzi schemes paying yield from nothing but new customers. However things like nfts came around to try force another use case. Combine that with the to stimulus money and pure market manipulation through stable coins and we got some traction.

Now everyone realizes there is zero true use case and proof of work Blockchains are slow and shite. So the new narrative is digital gold that countries supposedly are going to hold on to like it's worth something. Not realizing that politicians will have to justify spending real tax dollars on this

I got to think they are running out of idiot schemes to pry what leftover money is left in people willing to gamble in these useless 20 year old technology.

But as they say a sucker is born every minute. And people obviously still make money in a grift... Until they don't