Comment by lbsnake7 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by lbsnake7 | Hacker News Reader

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No one is promising a return, but the amount of people in the Bitcoin community that have said that the price could realistically reach into the millions is laughably too many.

Bitcoin proponents have a lot in common with pyramid scheme pushers. 'It is a completely new kind of system', 'the powers-that-be are scared of this new technology because this will destroy their old system', 'this will change the world', 'you are just mad that you didn't get in on the ground floor. but don't worry you can still be involved as this will only to go up', 'the price is undervalued right now but once it starts going up there will be no stopping it', 'this isn't a pyramid scheme or a Ponzi scheme or a pump-and-dump, this is legal and everyone hating is a shill for the other side!'. I'm paraphrasing a bit but you get the idea.

You should look up some videos of people supporting known pyramid schemes like Vemma and see the similarities between what they say and Bitcoin enthusiasts.

> No one is promising a return

Then it isn't a Ponzi scheme, period. A Ponzi is a scam where you're lied to about a fake investment that doesn't exist and promised a return in a certain amount of time, your money is then paid to past investors as their return. Bad investments aren't Ponzi's just because people lose money.

All that shit you're talking about is called speculation. Just because idiots sound alike doesn't make the thing they're talking about the same. Pyramid schemes and Ponzi schemes are very particular things: fake investments where no commodity or good exists, money machines that fail because people are lied to and tricked and don't have the sense to understand exponential growth. If you aren't tricked into it, it isn't a Ponzi scheme, if there's a real underlying commodity like Bitcoin, it isn't a Ponzi or Pyramid scheme.

Stop using words you don't understand.

People promoting their own investments to push up the price!?!?! Gasp!

Everything you describe happens in the equity market as well. It's simple speculation, not a Ponzi or Pyramid Scheme.

Also I'm not going to go into the details of each, but: Ponzi Scheme != Pyramid Scheme != Speculation

The scary part is that I have seen a pattern and trend that could lead to Bitcoin's value reaching upwards, perhaps towards the millions, because of some clever engineering and shifting around of money to help build up the legitimacy of Bitcoin; whether it would crash after or if there would be enough buy-in from people that the masses don't want it to crash because there's enough ownership, is a different question/problem.

You don't have a clue about what a ponzi scheme is if you think bitcoin is one.

Whether some people who invested in bitcoin advocate for it, share similarities with other people who invested in other things and advocate for those other things, including pyramid schemes, is completely unrelated.

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