"Why are you so upset now that you found out I'm stealing grandma's savings? Don't you know I stopped beating my wife already. Also I'm doing much less meth these days. A man don't get no respect around here." -- crypto, the deadbeat cousin of actual tech.
A Ponzi scheme has a specific definition. Despite what HN seems to think, it is not shorthand for "crypto thing I don't like/understand".
Here's the common definition of a Ponzi scheme. While people can debate whether any specific coin or nft built on etherium is a Ponzi scheme, it'd be hard to argue that there aren't plenty of examples.
Etherium makes it easy to spin up a new "coin" or token, the article is a prime example.
> Many Ponzi schemes share common characteristics. Look for these warning signs:
> High returns with little or no risk.
Some new shit coins and many NFT projects absolutely make these bullshit claims, but it's well, well known that there's risk by speculating in crypto at this point. We've all seen multiple 80% drops in bitcoin's price (or you can with a simple look at the 5-10 year chart). It's no secret. People speculate in it anyway for other reasons.
> Overly consistent returns. Investments tend to go up and down over time. Be skeptical about an investment that regularly generates positive returns regardless of overall market conditions.
Except for maybe stablecoins (which we found out this past year aren't exactly stable), no crypto coin can claim to have consistent returns.
> Unregistered investments. Ponzi schemes typically involve investments that are not registered with the SEC or with state regulators.
This part is true for many crypto coins, and the SEC is going after them now. Bitcoin itself seems to be immune to this by having no centralized component to it, which is unlike most other coins.
> Unlicensed sellers. Federal and state securities laws require investment professionals and firms to be licensed or registered.
Most exchanges are either licensed and registered if they operate in the US, hence their KYC measures.
> Secretive, complex strategies.
Yeah, some algorithmic stablecoins are like this (at least the complex part), and you've seen most of them collapse at this point. The rest are pretty simple coins for the most part, and many of them have completely open source code, so there's nothing secretive about it at all.
> Issues with paperwork. Account statement errors may be a sign that funds are not being invested as promised.
You can't really have an account statement error on the blockchain outside of a 51% attack (which is arguably not an error, just creating a new consensus), although some of the companies that have sprung up around it add obfuscation that can lead to possible account errors. Banks can have account errors as well, though.
> Difficulty receiving payments. Be suspicious if you don’t receive a payment or have difficulty cashing out.
This one can happen at exchanges, but the blockchains themselves still work and you can transfer with others directly, assuming you have taken your crypto off of exchanges ("Not your keys, not your crypto" as the saying goes).
[1]: https://www.investor.gov/protect-your-investments/fraud/type...
Unfortunately cryptocurrency and NFTs fit exactly the definition of a Ponzi scheme and it's quite easy to see why:
> Pon·zi scheme
> noun
> a form of fraud in which belief in the success of a nonexistent enterprise is fostered by the payment of quick returns to the first investors from money invested by later investors.
Literally the entire basis of deflationary speculative "currency" is a Ponzi scheme. It has no value if new people don't buy in.
What is the enterprise? Cryptocurrencies themselves have no governance or accountability. They don't have any responsibility to continue to exist beyond the efforts of the participants that are propping them up. This is evidenced by the massive number of rug-pulls that constantly happen in crypto.
> is a statement that evaluates to true for any currency ever minted.
Except not really. Let's talk about USD. If there were no new participants introduced to United States currency at this point it doesn't become valueless because it is not a deflationary speculative currency. It exists as an agreed upon representation of value, it doesn't need to continue to consume new participants to justify its valuation, or continue to exist.
Let me ask you, is there a good or common reason to buy etherium today besides hoping that it increases in value? How would it increase in value if no new people were introduced to the system? How does crypto justify its existence in any way beyond convincing the next biggest sucker to buy in? Bonus points if you don't mention stocks.
A classic use case is engaging in commerce (whether it's with ETH, DAI, USDC, etc), without needing to trust a middleman like PayPal to not freeze or steal your funds. For this one needs ETH to pay gas.
Common: The middleman is still there in the most common case since most wallets are custodial. There are a ton of recent examples of exchanges freezing accounts, including the very article that we're commenting under, so I don't really get what you're talking about.
Good: It doesn't make sense to use a wildly volatile deflationary token as currency. Deflation discourages spending which is why there is no real currency that restricts the supply of money to a fixed amount, because it encourages hoarding.
I wouldn't argue that everyone should self-custody. If many users have access to convenient custodians who they can trust not to steal their funds, that's great. Not everyone does though.
I don't really have a stance on Eth's monetary policy, I was just trying to address your point about a use case.
Surely that wouldn't change the value of famous originals? Because their value is based on its provenance, not the physical difficulty of creating something like it. NFTs are the same - replicating a JPEG is trivial, but the replica won't have the same provenance.
You can just say you don't understand the appeal, that is a perfectly valid opinion.
What? Source.
How do they plan on enforcing this?
- traders would be forbidden from making or accepting anonymous crypto transfers over 1,000 euros unless the identity of the other party can be verified
- Businesses would be forbidden from accepting over 7000 Euros in cash
- transfers between private individuals would be allowed even if they are large
- They are seeking to ban anonymous accounts
- Mixers, tumblers and privacy coins should be taken into account as risk factors when assessing money-laundering risk
Again, I suspect this comes down to incompetency and isn't even intentional. They want to regulate the space but they don't understand what smart contracts are and how dApps work.
I'm not sure that's that bad. I've got some crypto wallets but the stuff has got there by me transfering fiat to Kraken, with KYC, passport scan etc and then the USDT or whatever to the wallet so it's easy enough to trace it to me.
If you allow fully anonymous stuff to interact with the regular financial system it does kind of leave it open to all sorts of tax evasion / illegal activities.
Do you want to make cash illegal and the government to trace every single financial transaction you do? Even worse, web3 is mostly not about money in the first place. Do you want them to track everything you do online, every app you interact with, every file you uploaded?
Tyranny. People make technology to get around their idiotic laws and control. Suddenly they must become more tyrannical than they were before just to maintain the same control they previously enjoyed. We'll either end up with anarchy enabled by subversive technology or totalitarian governments that regulate everything their citizens do online.
Who's going to show up at some untrustworthy place with fat stacks of cash in order to trade crypto?
> as it is initially meant to be used
It was meant to replace the USD for everything including everyday transactions.
Lots of people, actually. Its more common than you would think!
The hardest part is matchmaking and (optionally) escrow.
LocalBitcoin originally did this for IRL but then stopped as they were slapped by a regulator. They were taking a cut from the escrow and acting as a custodial wallet, which made it easy to spank them.
They are now kaput.
There are other, less stupid, platforms that replace them.
There are ways to transact P2P without meeting in person. Bisq is decentralized example.
> It was meant to replace the USD for everything including everyday transactions.
I did not read this chapter of the Bitcoin whitepaper
Yeah let's all be more friendly to burning down the planet in order to enable scams.
HN is often a terrible place for some topics, even surprising ones like computer graphics, and has its own clueless but opinionated "bros" the same way cryptobros are insufferable.
Of course I disapprove of old school banking scams as well. Beyond that, I won't engage in your whataboutism. It's not making the crypto pyramid schemes any better.
Kraken as well. They don’t play the game other exchanges such as Binance play and are happy to function just an ordinary simple exchange. However it’s difficult to know since they are not a public company and proof of reserves means nothing without knowing how much debt the exchange has.
I don’t want to defend Binance. They are shady and they deserve to go down, but there is no week that goes buy that the USA does not sue anybody or closes a crypto friendly bank such as Signature. Off ramps are all crippled. The European Parliament wants to limit the amount you can deposit to a private wallet. It’s non stop to the point I personally laugh every time.
All this feels to me like a coordinated non stop attack and it already has a code name, operation chokepoint 2.0
In all fairness I wish HN was a bit more friendly to crypto specially to Ethereum which has switched to a more ecologically friendly model, that is innovating in regard to zk proofs… Specially in a month that Shanghai upgrade launches, and the probability that the SEC fills a lawsuit against the Ethereum Foundation will exponentially grow.