It's absolutely not. Go google the definition of a pyramid scheme

I just did, and the first result was https://finance.yahoo.com/news/economist-bitcoin-is-a-pyrami...

Google the definition not a fucking opinion. Jesus whenever Bitcoin is brought up we get a horde of midwits

Not a convincing argument.

To engage in rational discourse one has to a at least put minimum effort in the topic

Your original comment was just an assertion without analysis or argument. Was this exchange meant to be performance art?

Because bitcoin is simply not a pyramid scheme. It has been argued wrongly for over 10 years. Why not read the definition of what pyramid scheme is first? It would clear all doubts, yet people love to parrot dumb headlines

You can argue semantics (I mean you're not really even trying) but the fact is that most pyramid schemes at least give some bottles of herbal supplements or crystals or something. Crypto is valued exactly as much as the rate that people keep buying it (minus a load of wasted electricity) and nothing else.

It is literally illegal in the US to advertise investments on TV yet there has been an absolute bombardment of marketing trying to get as many average joes as possible to buy crypto to goose the price. Enticing unsophisticated investors with a promise of massive rewards coupled with badgering FOMO is the exact MO of pyramid schemes.

Its literally not a pyramid scheme. You could call it a scam sure.

A pyramid scheme means that you use money from new investors to pay previous investors.

Thats not at all what happens with Bitcoin.

Bitcoin just trades like a commodity...

You can call it a bubble sure.

But its simply not a pyramid scheme

> A pyramid scheme means that you use money from new investors to pay previous investors.

That's a Ponzi scheme.

A pyramid scheme is when you have to pay to your superiors and recruit subordinates, in a way that the main way of recouping your investment is by bringing more subordinates, so that it's only profitable to those in the first few levels of the pyramid.

A pyramid scheme is a distributed, decentralized Ponzi scheme

Same to you

Let me tell you about a new NFT I'm launching for our fans so they can own a piece of the ~watever~ and show their support to us. Each NFT will be a AI generated thumbs up that's slightly unique, just like you.

# Yep, crypto and it's offshoots are totally not a scam.

the us dollar system is the biggest pyramid scheme :D. Ask people in third world countries. Bitcoin is an alternative from US fiat currency. It is not country backed, but run by individual actors around the world. Will there be volatility? yes, welcome to a true free market system in a high inflation world

No fiat is a pyramid. Fiat currencies are actively managed and the managers are at least partially answerable to elected policy makers. If fiat is a pyramid, then all civilized society and representative democracy is a pyramid.

You could use the same argument about gold which is worth over $10 trillion for an amount that fits into a swimming pool.

People have absolutely been using gold investments to run scams on the financially unsophisticated, just like they have been with crypto: https://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/goldline-execs-charged-fraud/...

Gold is ductile and a good conductor. Outside of it's shiny / jewelry uses it's actually a useful metal. Crypto only consumes energy as a product of it's existence.

And when the mining stops, all its value vanishes. Value stored on jelly. Bitcoin has a runaway implosion mechanism built in, and no floor on its price except 0.

I bet there's a lot of people who've bought bitcoin on leverage. Bitcoin may go to zero and it'll cost a lot of money on it's journey there.

If you owned all the gold in the world, you would have a hard time getting trillions of dollars out of it.

I agree, it's value is also speculative. I'm just making the point that it can be useful in it's own fundamental self.

It's not important enough to justify the valuation. I believe that was GP's argument.

Gold is a useful material for some use-cases, and people want it because it's pretty. Even if its intrinsic value is overshadowed by store-of-value value, BTC has nothing on that front.

Bitcoin can be transferred instantly across the world and the amounts verified by computers. Gold cannot.

>Bitcoin can be transferred instantly across the world and the amounts verified by computers. Gold cannot.

Which is a huge win for gold.

I'm still looking for all my apes that got stolen.

Gold can be transferred between parties without leaving a public audit trail. Bitcoin cannot.

You can sort of transfer Bitcoin without an audit trail by giving someone the private keys to an account.

I guess, but there's no proof the sender has deleted their copies of the keys. You would need to immediately transfer the assets to another wallet, and until you did, the sender could rescind the transfer by moving the coins themselves.

Although meeting in person to physically transfer gold requires a similar amount of trust, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I fail to see how this is relevant at all, the point of parent was about intrinsic value.

There is intrinsic value in having a globally accessible Bitcoin network that has lots of liquidity.

Although people aren't pouring money into gold with the hope of making big profit.

The folks at ZeroHedge would disagree

The folks at ZeroHedge have also predicted the financial apocalypse about seventeen times since 2008.