Comment by PragmaticPulp | Hacker News Reader

Comment by PragmaticPulp | Hacker News Reader

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> The commonality with the Ponzi Scheme is that returns are solely based on others continued investment and that the value collapses if they stop doing this continuously.

And before anyone tries to make a stock market comparison: No, this isn’t the same as stocks.

Stocks are, literally, partial ownership of a company. A shareholder owns part of the underlying company, including everything from their bank balances to their brand.

Bitcoin would be like subtracting out all of the valuable parts of a company and leaving nothing but the shares behind. You get an entry in a database (the blockchain) and nothinf else. Literally the only thing that gives this database entry any value is the ability to convince someone else to give you money in exchange for it.

So common stocks do not have any claims on the bank balances of a company. I'm not defending crypto but your assertion is not wholly correct. Ostensibly you are the very last in line of creditors to claim any assets if the company goes bankrupt but you will get very little to nothing .. pennies on the dollar if anything.

Stocks give you voting rights at the AGM and a claim on future profits through stock appreciation or dividends if the company decides to issue dividends.

Common units _do_ have a claim on the bank balance of a company in the case it winds up. It’s just that employees, bond holders and preference share holders get paid first.

Except not all stocks are like that. Non-voting right stocks are illegal in some countries but legal in the US.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-voting_stock

Any kind of money only has value if there is willing social acceptance for that money, aka, people who want it. That's the point of money.

Its value comes from being in a secure, immutable database, accessible from any point on the planet with an internet connection, censorship resistant, and more private.

The S&P 500 paid out something like $0.8T in dividends last year, profits from the economically productive activities of the companies to which shareholders had a claim.

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