It's a naturally occurring, negative-sum pyramid scheme. All money extracted is coming from subsequent entrants to the scheme.

I wouldn’t say negative sum inherently. At least not any more than fiat is negative sum because you need to maintain a military to keep it around.

The purpose of a military is not solely to provide continuity for a currency, it is to provide security for the interests and inhabitants of a nation.

Also, regardless of any morality issues, having a military _creates value_ in a way that Bitcoin cannot. The employees of a military are paid, they spend their wages in the country's economy, they must be supplied with equipment which must be manufactured, those manufacturers & soldiers pay taxes, the enhanced security of a nation makes it less risky for investment and business growth etc etc.

The purpose of a military in part to provide continuity for a currency.

The employees of a military are paid... by taxpayers, who are the ones creating value.

Currencies can continue quite happily without notable military power in the absence of outside threats, whilst an absence of military in the presence of invaders tends to hinder taxpayers' ability to create value regardless of what currency they were paid in before the invasion.

Arguing that military exists for the purpose of protecting currency is akin to arguing that cryptographers exists for the purpose of protecting currency. Technically, that is one of the things they do [for cryptocurrencies and banks alike], but it'd be fairly ridiculous to claim that making cryptographers more useful was some sort of negative side effect of currency comparable to Bitcoin's energy use.

If you take for granted that a classic military force (threatening, and sometimes engaged in a war of aggression) is always necessary, then a way to suppress one of its mission is useless.

If you read some pretty authorized authors about it, let's say Smedley D. Butler ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Is_a_Racket ), then having one and only one mission for the army (self-defense) may be a better way.

Pyramid != ponzi. And just because it's a distributed scheme with no central orchestrator doesnt mean it's not the same from the investors standpoint.

Right, I think Ponzi is a more accurate potential criticism of crypto

Mince words all you want. It's a scam.

Words matter.

>words can mean anything i want them to mean

I keep reading that Tether is the ponzi in the ponzi-scheme.

That central entity is called Tether.