To be clear: I am NOT BitCoin is a ponzi schema. Some other alt coins definately smell like it - especially if they are created without doing ANY kind of work.
It is backed by the same USD that Bitcoin fans claim is worthless, yet they price it in USD and extract USD from it to buy things.
Eventually one day the USD supplies will get dangerously low and there will be a systemic bank run and it will collapse. It came dangerously close in 2018. The tide will eventually go out again.
Two economic laws of gravity: wildcat banking systems always fail, and it is never different this time.
Many seem to make the same mistake and focus too much on the "my coin will keep going up" crowd. There're a lot of real technical challenges being solved in the crypto space, and I feel it'll still be interesting to follow from an academic standpoint even after the next inevitable bubble burst.
The people who extracted money early will wind up net positive, the people who did not will wind up seeing it all lost.
That's a Ponzi. Arguing about it is splitting hairs and missing the forest for the trees.
So, we're discussing a hypothetical where the price of gold goes to zero. And you're suggesting that in this hypothetical scenario there would still be industrial and commercial uses for gold? If that was the case, then the price of gold would not be zero, would it?
Also: when you're referring to "commercial" use of gold, you're mainly referring to gold jewelry, e.g. people who like to admire gold for its beauty. If the prize of gold went to zero (e.g. no more industrial or commercial uses for gold), then people could still admire their gold coins. In the exact same manner, people could still admire their Bitcoin wallets if the price of Bitcoin went to zero. So I'm not sure what you were trying to prove with that argument.
Anyway, neither Bitcoin nor gold is ever going to go to exactly zero, so this hypothetical scenario is not exactly realistic. Nor is it relevant to the question at hand: is gold/bitcoin a ponzi scheme? And the answer of course is "no", because ponzi scheme has a specific definition, and if you look at that definition, it's very obvious that neither of these assets fit that definition.
Most people join ponzis knowingly trying to make an impossible buck on the back of the next guy.
I can understand poor communities exploited by MLM companies, maybe (but who thinks money comes from selling idiotic products to your friends, really?), but ponzi victims losing all their saving when it falls should consider:
- why put so much in non mainstream vehicles (cash, real estate, your company's stock)
- if non insured by the government, it's always a possibility to lose it all, it can't be such a surprise. Even a nice house can lose all its value due to a construction nearby
If someone is happy to talk for hours about their low latency machine learning AI block chain black swan delta hedged arbitrage manifold engine people throw money at them.