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Comment by borrowcheckfml | Hacker News Reader

I agree with you, but looking at what comes out of Silicon Valley these days, there is a fine line between "ponzi scheme" (in the broad sense) and "re-invest everything in growth and hope to get acquired". I'd push back that many traditional startups, most of which end up never being profitable but still exit in one way or another due to hype and investor relationships, are just as close to pump and dump schemes as many crypto projects are. It just isn't as obvious because the time scale is usually a bit longer.

> But a crypto project is not a traditional scalable company

Why is that true? There are DeFi crypto projects that are scalable companies with big revenue streams. Sure, the space is driven by speculation, but you can argue the same about Robinhood.

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Cryptocurrencies, DeFi, and retail trading are all areas where more skilled traders take money from less skilled traders.

These venues can be distinguished from a Ponzi scheme because the participants are traders in a market, not investors in a company or managed financial product.

I agree with you generally and consider stock-picking to be gambling.

But retail traders can use the markets to make bets on overall economic growth. Buying a stake in hundreds or thousands of public companies is a clear bet, and you actually do own something in a legal sense.

With crypto trading, it's unclear what your bet is -- other than the continuation of the Ponzi scheme. You don't own anything, and the coin has no value as soon as people stop believing in it.

If retail investors understood that nature of crypto, I'd be fine with them gambling on it. But most of them are tricked into believing there is underlying value in the coin when there actually isn't (see also: NFTs).

I agree; cryptocurrencies are a scam. But in general they're not Ponzis, with some exceptions e.g. the situation the parent poster describes where VC investors get "early coins" which are sold to later buyers.

To be clear, you're saying that you believe that every last cryptocurrency is a scam with no exclusions? To me it seems absurd that none are non-scams, and makes me think you're just making baseless claims.

It's been 14 years and if the whole space disappeared overnight what would change? The news cycle would be less entertaining I guess. So much so China was able to nuke the whole space from orbit and what? Crickets.

But I am referring to investing into a DeFi project as a VC (= receiving tokens), not trading in Defi. Why is that not equivalent to investing in Robinhood as a startup?

With that clarification I agree that it would be a Ponzi scheme. If the project is mainly accepting money from new buyers and routing it to early participants who are selling, then it's a Ponzi.

The reality is that we need a new term than ponzi scheme to determine if we are willing to respect a financial model or not

The state (us government) has made it clear that there is no distinction it can stand behind anymore

sometimes earlier investors get paid out by newer investors

whether it’s a high yield investment program, a poorly run hedge fund, or the entire corporate bond market, or social security, or herbalife, or defi

The debate over the name of the payout system is no longer productive, as ponzi scheme - as a pejorative term - doesn’t tell you anything

> need a new term than ponzi scheme

"Fraud" works for me.

All nascent markets are wildcat melees. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wildcatter

Useful markets are eventually regulated. To save the market from itself, to calm down the townsfolk brandishing pitchforks and torches, to assert central control over a proven grift.

Time will tell if all these crypto kittens prove useful for more than fraud.

It doesn’t work for me because it has a legal meaning applied retroactively

Your proposal of using it would at best case simply dilute that word until it was no longer useful, and worst case open its users up to libel due to being a legal term

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