subgenius wrote:You are aware that bitcoin is just a ponzi scheme and you will ultimately lose your money?
Bingo! Our current system is a complete scam in favor of the Fed and big banks. No question about it.
But Bitcoin itself doesn't fit the definition of a Ponzi scheme at all. Now some of the ICO lending platforms that are paying crazy interest rates daily (like the one I'm invested in), certainly could be scams. They say their payouts are generated from the profits of their "trading bot". So far that seems to be the case and the variable rate fluctuates with their market activity, but there is no real way to prove they have a bot and aren't just using new money to make their payments. But just like a tree falling in the woods with no one to hear it, is it really a scam if you know exactly the risk your are taking? I'm pulling off $2000 every 10 days from the lending site back to my wallet. I'm almost whole with my out of pocket cash I put in, so its all gravy from there on out. With the new money pouring into the crypto currency market, this platform could easily last a couple more years. But if it doesn't, you won't see me crying or writing my congressman or the SEC demanding someone make me whole from my mistakes. I knew the risk 100% before going in, and Risk = Reward. May it ever be so.
“A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take away everything that you have.”
I obviously don't see eye-to-eye with him but I appreciate his line of argumentation more than subs drive by. Honestly I thought the first comment was a more sucinct version of the same argument, but found them both worth a read.
A general overview from the post:
When we talk about Bitcoin, or Ethereum or any other digital coin, for that matter, neither “ponzi” nor “pyramid” are perfectly accurate descriptions for how these systems actually work.
Ponzi schemes, as traditionally run, usually are administered by a central operator (Charles Ponzi, Allen Stanford, Bernie Madoff, Sergei Mavrodi) who is responsible for bringing in new funds and disbursing withdrawals from the scheme in an orderly fashion. These schemes fall apart when demands exceed deposits and the scheme promoter is unable to satisfy investor requests, causing a loss in confidence or a run which first ruins the scheme’s liquidity, which in turn ruins the scheme as a whole (or rather, brings the scheme to its inevitable end, since Ponzi schemes are doomed to die from the moment of their inception – none can expand forever).
Pyramid schemes, by contrast, are more decentralized in character. Each victim of the scheme, to recoup their funds, is required to become a principal in the scheme and recruit further victims, who then pay the principal and earlier principals above him. Not all multi-level schemes that are pyramidal in structure are illegitimate; see, e.g., Avon, which has a genuine product at its core and employs a legally-sound “direct selling” structure. Other types of pyramid schemes, where licenses to recruit new members are the sole product, are illegal, whether they be small-time pyramids that target housewives such as “secret sister gift exchanges” or flagrant pyramids like the Dare to be Great scheme in the 1970s, where the product was the right to sell the product, and little more.
For this reason, it is perhaps time for the literature to describe new class of investment scam – the truly ugly nature of which will only be revealed after the coin bubble bursts – a class of fraud which uses technology, rather than a scheme operator, to mediate the interactions between an investment scam’s beneficiaries and its dupes.
"If you consider what are called the virtues in mankind, you will find their growth is assisted by education and cultivation." -Xenophon of Athens
subgenius wrote:You are aware that bitcoin is just a ponzi scheme and you will ultimately lose your money?
Chances are better that one will outlive the FR scheme. But please, invest your cash, return and report.
Seek freedom and become captive of your desires...seek discipline and find your liberty I can tell if a person is judgmental just by looking at them what is chaos to the fly is normal to the spider - morticia addams If you're not upsetting idiots, you might be an idiot. - Ted Nugent
EAllusion wrote:So bitcoin, as you might guess, has been a darling of libertarian circles for many years. My favorite libertarian publication, Reason, has been pimping it from the get go. If you do a search on the term in their archives, you get 17 pages of articles since it debuted. I've read positive articles about bitcoin on the regular for years on end now. I read an article from a few years ago at Reason celebrating how it was now trading at an all-time high of $31. (It's nearing $20k right now.)
As early as 2010 or so I remember thinking I should buy a little bitcoin on a lark, but never got around to it. Every nerdy libertarian type like me is supposed to have gotten a little bitcoin at the beginning of his decade. That's peak stereotype. But I was lazy and I didn't.
Now that it's undergone an insane climb in value this year, fueled by wildly irresponsible speculation, I'm starting to get pangs of regret about how much money I could be rolling in right now if I was slightly less lazy. I try to console myself by thinking I'd have sold well before it got this high, but that has only dulled the regret.
I didn’t.
But then I’m not dependent upon govt dollars and, as a result, suspect I spend way more time in the investment community as opposed to message boards than you and had been a learned pupil on bit coins 10 years ago.
It’s a fractional hedge in my portfolio but my basis is about $1,000 per unit.
EAllusion wrote:So bitcoin, as you might guess, has been a darling of libertarian circles for many years. My favorite libertarian publication, Reason, has been pimping it from the get go. If you do a search on the term in their archives, you get 17 pages of articles since it debuted. I've read positive articles about bitcoin on the regular for years on end now. I read an article from a few years ago at Reason celebrating how it was now trading at an all-time high of $31. (It's nearing $20k right now.)
As early as 2010 or so I remember thinking I should buy a little bitcoin on a lark, but never got around to it. Every nerdy libertarian type like me is supposed to have gotten a little bitcoin at the beginning of his decade. That's peak stereotype. But I was lazy and I didn't.
Now that it's undergone an insane climb in value this year, fueled by wildly irresponsible speculation, I'm starting to get pangs of regret about how much money I could be rolling in right now if I was slightly less lazy. I try to console myself by thinking I'd have sold well before it got this high, but that has only dulled the regret.
I didn’t.
But then I’m not dependent upon govt dollars and, as a result, suspect I spend way more time in the investment community as opposed to message boards than you and had been a learned pupil on bit coins 10 years ago.
It’s a fractional hedge in my portfolio but my basis is about $1,000 per unit.
Good luck if you want to play!!
Still in character I see. You suck, by the way, as an actor.
Black Moclips wrote:But what if it gets to $40K by the end of next year as some predict and you could have gotten in at $17K? Still a great return. And remember, you don't have to buy a full bitcoin at a time. You can buy it in fractions (at least 4 decimals out I believe).
I only found out about crypto currencies and ICO's this summer. I was going to buy 4 coins at about $2500 per, but didn't get my account up in a timely manner (lazy). When I finally did, bitcoin was up to just below $4K (damn!) so I bought 1, and watched it appreciate up to almost $7K, before I then used it on a lending platform that is paying me on average 1% per day (talk about some crazy math there). By going the lending route, I've given up the appreciation on bitcoin itself in favor of a more consistent interest payout tied to the bitcoin market.
I also bought 10 Ether about a month ago at $300 per coin and that is now at $739 per coin. I bought 10 Litecoins the other day (after hearing the gaming site Steam now accepts it) for $170 per coin, and I honestly thought I missed on that one. But now it is up to $331 per coin in less than a week!
I honestly don't know what will become of all this. I'm prepared to lose 100% of all of it though. That is the kind of mindset you have to have with something so new and so hyped. But just like when the internet popped on the scene and was new, a lot of money was made in those first few years. It will eventually stabilize and you wont see these types of gains. But just getting into it a little bit has been fun. As countries blow out their budgets and jack up their debt levels to unsustainable levels and central banks devalue their currencies by keeping the printer going 24/7, people will inevitably look for other options. I love the fact that it drives governments nuts and is something they cannot control.
Just bumping this thread in light of today's cryptocurrency bloodbath.
I'm just wondering if cryptocurrency will ever be used for normal payment transactions. Ripple reddit board believes their system will be adopted by banks but banks wouldn't touch something like that with a ten foot pole, stuff that could lose 10 percent of it's value in a few hours, or 50 percent in a few days.
Banks have also stopped people from buying cryptocurrency with their credit cards. Some are outright banning it and others are turning crypto buys into a credit card cash advance where they are hit with huge fees and interest. I guess people in the past were just paying for cryptocurrency like they were paying for a toaster and especially if they had a new card with 0 percent interest for 9 months and cash back for purchases. Banks are saying no to that now.
And the worse part is that the exchanges have all the power.
Look at what one guy in Italy called the bomber did with all non EU accounts on his exchange:
Well, I cashed out of Ether a few weeks ago and locked in a $8000 gain. I wasn't holding any Bitcoin itself, but used it to buy other alt coins that might take off. The lending platform I was involved in, Bitconnect, did end up closing, but I pulled down more in interest in the couple of months that I was in it, so overall I came out ahead. I'm up since I began my crypto experiment, and it has been fun to just get involved. It will be interesting to see where things lead with all the different coins coming out. Some of them will skyrocket for sure, but no telling which ones. Bitcoin may be down, but I think its premature to count it out. Its still up 50% from where it was 6 months ago. Its not like traditional stocks didn't get punched in the nutsack today too.
“A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take away everything that you have.”
