Reply With QuoteIn Bitcoin, who is Ponzi?Originally Posted by lardy
| + Visit Cardiff FC for Latest News, Transfer Gossip, Fixtures and Match Results |
Yes, but he wasn't the entire stock market.
In Bitcoin, who is Ponzi?
Nobody is, as far as I know. I said it was similar to a Ponzi.
Or to be more precise with what I said in #69, as I think people are going to jump on this, the current reliance on getting new investors is the similarity with a Ponzi.
You use the word 'crypto' as if in the singular. There are many cryptocurrencies and a lot of them already have a practical use, other than as a store of value.
such as?
I was replying to someone who also used crypto that way - I guess it's the same as when someone says footballers earn too much money. They don't mean literally every single pro player.
You know more about this than me, and there's thousands of coins, so yes I'm sure it doesn't apply to all.
Okay, off the top of my head and coins which I already own.... 'Theta' has been adopted by Sony and tackles the problem of bandwidth when streaming videos (buffering). It allows peer-to-peer sharing of bandwidth. Any smart TV can be integrated with Theta.
'XRP' has been adopted by a number of banks for the use of cross-border payments. Currently, the use of SWIFT or SEPA can take a number of working days to clear and can be costly (I recently paid 48 GBP to transfer money from the UK to China). XRP on the other hand can make such payments in seconds/minutes and costs pennies.
XRP (Ripple Labs) blows other payment methods such as Western Union and PayPal out of the water.
But its nothing like a ponzi.
Miners mine the bitcoin. Existential arguments aside for now, we assume IT is a thing, it is on the bitcoin ledger and thus now existing. The miner now has a thing, the miner goes to the market and sells it, and then that thing is bought, sold and traded and exists (again putting aside the question exist). A Ponzi is robbing peter to pay paul, where nothing exists i fail to see the similarity.
But why are people buying, selling and trading?
Imagine if you bought one bitcoin for Ł1,000 and you knew that it would still cost Ł1,000 in five years (hypothetical, ignoring inflation, etc). How much interest would there be in buying it today?
Probably very little. Most people only want it because they think it'll go up in value, and the only way that happens is if more new buyers increase demand.
That's the similarity with the Ponzi. When new buyers 'run out' the value drops as there's nothing to sustain it, which I think we're seeing now.
Like I said, I'm not shitting on it. Bitcoin will have an upward trend again.
but the question remains over the value of "the thing"
If you mine up a load of gold, the price will go up or down, but you'd expect there to be a floor below which it won't go, because the gold itself has some use.
At the moment many people want bitcoin, but only because they think the price will go up. If everyone thinks the price will go down then it will go down, everyone will sell and it will become completely worthless. There is no floor.
It is relying on enough people believing they can make money out of having it to retain any value. like tinkerbell coming back to life in peter pan.
If enough people lose faith in that then its dead.
Investment goes up when more people want to buy it and down when less people want to buy it.
How is that different to buying Amazon or Google stock?
All those things you say could well be true and happen, who knows. However, Bitcoin and Blockchain is the antithesis of a Ponzi, it literally sits on a public ledger...that is the whole point.
And so it may come to pass, I have no idea but it's not a Ponzi, that's all I'm arguing.
If people questioned the real banking system as ****ing hard as they do Bitcoin it would never have been invented
Same reasons I gave when I replied to you about Tesla earlier.
But bitcoin has a purpose beyond speculation. In fact its entire purpose exists beyond speculation. If the project succeeds it will eliminate money laundering and fraud. It will do away with banks. Credit card fees will be a thing of the past, as will credit cards. It is not a ponzi scheme. It might be a bubble, but that is not the same as a Ponzi scheme.
But the underlying concept is excellent. The purpose was not to create an asset that people could speculate on, it was to fix a systemic problem. And blockchain can really do that. Crypto is using the blockchain to transfer value, but blockchain is increasingly being used to transfer assets directly as well through NFTs. Getting your head around swapping fiat currency for crypto takes quite a big step; getting your head around swapping crypto for the "ownership" of (for example) an image through an NFT takes a massive leap. And honestly, I've not made it yet. I had a small part to play in the creation of some NFTs recently but it does feel like something of a lottery as to what will blow up and what will whimper. For example would someone on here be willing to pay money to "own" this board's Bale sell-on clause post? Hockey, basketball etc cards go for MILLIONS of dollars and on the face of it they are just valueless pieces of card that have no utility - is it any more ridiculous that ownership of digital versions of these things could go for huge sums too? So you could have a blockchain-based panini album in future. It rather lacks the social benefits of trading physical cards in the playground, but this time the big kid can't nick them because you can prove they are yours. A trivial example maybe, but you can quite easily see how something like this could revolutionise the music industry (again).
I'm really struggling to get my head around the many and various use cases for blockchain, and in particular the taxation of cryptos and NFTs which is where I have a professional interest. But fundamentally - the concept of blockchain is absolutely brilliant and I really hope we do manage to make use of it as a society.
But what makes the price of those assets go up and down? You claimed earlier that it 'moves on company profits', how do you think that works for stocks that don't pay a dividend?
You can own a share of something profitable but if there is no dividend and there are more sellers than buyers where would its value trend to?
Company profits was one example of external factors, I also said "etc".
Amazon and Google are two massively successful companies. Has that got anything to do with their stock price rising? Of course.
I can't really tell you more than that about what makes stocks go up or down, unfortunately. If I could I'd be the richest man in the world.
Just like to say , I havent got a clue when it comes to Bitcoin etc . This thread has prised my eyes open ever so slightly .
The discussions are interesting and informative.
Thanks x
I don't think we are on the same page here.
If you buy Amazon stock today, assuming that they don't suddenly decide to pay a dividend what will make it worth more or less in 2 years time? Current success/size of the company is already priced in, you don't share in the profit/success of the company anyway. News has an indirect effect on price because it makes people buy/sell it (exactly the same as bitcoin - see news from China and eco concerns this week and the effect on price) but the only the direct factor influencing the price of Amazon or Google stock is the amount being bought and sold.
Exactly that
There can be speculators/ponzi style investors and still have a base value to its practicality
That's where the art lies - knowing what it's worth.
Great Post!
people miss the point of crypto, there is no central bank. whether it is limited or unlimited it will always have a value as funds can be shifted from one place to another outside of government control
Any updates regarding bitcoin is it true prices have plummeted?
Good time to invest?
How do you buy?
It is indeed true, prices have plummeted.
There are a number of reasons that contributed to the sharp fall -
China announced a ban on all Bitcoin mining (a huge % of Bitcoin is mined there), this alone had a big impact on the price. Other factors were some major banks were refusing to send customers' money to known crypto exchanges. Added to this, Binance, the biggest crypto exchange in the world, came under scrutiny for some of its practices. Further to this, USDT, which is a stable coin that many people use to buy Bitcoin with, was also subject to allegations against it. All of this negative news came together within a short space of time.
Then you have the 'whales' ... these are large holders of a cryptocurrency (often professional traders) manipulating the market. They purposely drive down the price and hope that the likes of you and I will panic and sell off our holdings, which the whales snap up at a low price.
Unfortunately, this kind of 'bloodbath comes with the territory in the world of crypto. It will bounce back, as it always does. As an investor, you just need to hold steady and not panic sell.
If you are interested in buying while prices are relatively low, you could do what I did - send your money to 'Coinbase' and buy Bitcoin there. If the coin you want is not listed on Coinbase (they are quite limited) then send your Bitcoin/Litecoin or whatever from Coinbase to somewhere like Binance, where they have almost every crypto under the sun.
Posting Permissions