> The case also underscores the fast-growing appetite for cryptocurrencies in Brazil, where years of economic and political crises have made digital currencies an attractive shield against depreciation of the Brazilian real and double-digit inflation.

Adoption of bitcoin in Brazil was highest from 2015 through 2017. It has not grown significantly in recent years hampered by the energy costs rising and killing mining operations. At the time inflation was not 2 digits. It was only 2 digits in 2021, because of the pandemic (mostly). The Real has also has only significantly depreciated since the pandemic, having kept a somewhat stable value of 0.25 USD for the previous 5 years.

Financial expert Lyn Alden explains what a Ponzi scheme actually is and why bitcoin isn’t: https://www.lynalden.com/bitcoin-ponzi-scheme/

It’s turtles all the way down.

15 years for number 2.

Madoff was first investigated in 1992 and shut down in 2008 for 16 years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madoff_investment_scandal

Madoff was paying cashflows to his clients. Bitcoin pays nobody.

What are the longest running pyramid schemes? Gold sees to be running for nearly 5000 years, seems like plenty of runway here.

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20160127-the-conman-who-p...

Of course there is, that's what the Brazilian guys in the article we're commenting on were arrested for. Schemes worth 5 billion in total that included false promises of delivering monthly returns of 10% on bitcoin 'investments'.

Pretty much the entire value of countless of coins, nfts or other largely imaginary financial products is a game of bigger fool. People paying tens of thousands for NFTs of pictures or tweets makes no more sense than that old scam of buying an acre of land on the moon or of an imaginary country.

And of course the other big similarity is the shared psychological reaction. Rather than people waking up to the fact that they're entangled in increasingly bizarre financial transactions, the rationalizations for the behavior become weirder and weirder.

The Bitcoin network does actually function as advertised and there's no technical reason for it not to be a decentralised network of value exchange.

I understand that at HN even considering blockchain technologies yields a strong pushback but at some point you need to admit that the crypto people are onto something. Bitcoin denies to die even after the rush of speculative investors and get rich quick folks dies off.

Why would people give up the opportunity to cash out the winnings of investments/gambles? People do the same with some stocks.

If you believe that Bitcoin has a bright future and even may become a global currency, it's a bad investment move to sell your bitcoins at any time. Sure, you can argue that you can sell high and later buy more for less but that's timing the market and no one can actually reliably do that and as a result if someone believes that BTC will be huge in the future will never sell. When the mission is accomplished, they will use it as money to purchase goods and services.

Here's a thought, if your medium of exchange is someone else's cash-out, pump-and-dump opportunity, then maybe it's not a good medium of exchange.

JP Morgan spoofed the precious metals market and got caught.

In the medium of exchange category, the forex market has been manipulated for decades.

You are more at risk of volatility and manipulation in crypto markets because they are immature. Bitcoin is still in the discovery stage.

Well yeah, that was my point. That's why in many countries with rampant inflation they use USD or EUR, as mediums of exchange because they're currencies controlled by powerful economies and governments which have proven to be mostly stable throughout recent history, save for major disasters, therefore their currencies exert a large amount of trust and stability on the financial markets, vs BTC that fluctuates more extremely more quickly without any brakes from any government as the BTC you got yesterday for selling your PS4 on ebay could maybe now buy you a yacht or maybe not even a big mac.

Also don't forget that if it happens that BTC replaces the government controlled currencies as some pundits claim, there won't be pump and dumps etc. No one pumps and dumps USD in the USA but they do it in other countries.

A quick example is Turkey where the USD gained against the Turkish lira a lot and lost over %30 value overnight but USD is still good.

Your comment serves to make a point for strong and stable fiat like USD, not for Bitcoin which also just lost around 40% of its value in a month.

BTW I don't hold any crypto, I simply find it fascinating and I think there's some merit in its ideas and technologies.

Wouldn't you agree that if enough people keep their flower bulbs instead of simply buying for cheap and selling at a higher price, the structure will stop resembling a ponzi scheme?

Your statement boils down to: Yes, but.. what if... we don't TREAT it as a ponzi scheme? See! Now it isn't a ponzi scheme!

Yes. And IF only the moon was made of cheese, then the moon would be made of cheese.

I agree, that's how we have gold as a value store. However flower bulbs are not durable like gold and can grow exponentially on supply through farming - no surprise we don't store value in flower bulbs today. Bitcoin doesn't suffer from these issues.

Except for one, not anymore, and two, the value of gold doesn't only come from speculation like in BTC, but from supply and demand from real world applications of gold, like semiconductors, electronics, aerospace, automotive, medical, etc. since it's one of the best electrical conductors and heat reflecting materials we have.

Without gold, we'd be screwed royally, making the current supply chain disruptions seem like a walk in the park. Without BTC, we could fork 1000 other crypto-coins onto which people can speculate on and nothing would be lost.

However, there are new cryptos coming online every week it seems. Almost like growing different colored tulips.

Bitcoin is more like infrastructure that people can use to play pump-and-dump games. We've seen with meme stocks (and previously, penny stocks) that just about any financial asset can be used for these games. It doesn't need to be intentionally set up for that. It's structural in having a limited supply, a volatile price, and continuous trading. Just add hype, which serves as coordination among the players about which financial asset to use to play the game.

One difference is that a cryptocurrency's value can come primarily though not exclusively from its usefulness for playing pump-and-dump games. High fees and volatility deter most usage for payments, and there is no income stream other than new investors buying in.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3105306/

2. It's not a value, it's a numerical record.

3. What do you mean by "as advertised"? It's "advertised" that bitcoin can solve world's hunger...

4. There are numerous technical reasons not to use it

It's all a scam.