• comrade_madoff@lemmygrad.ml
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    2 years ago

    Here’s the definition of a ponzi scheme from Investor.gov: A Ponzi scheme is an investment fraud that pays existing investors with funds collected from new investors. Ponzi schemes are named after Charles Ponzi. In the 1920s, Ponzi promised investors a 50% return within a few months for what he claimed was an investment in international mail coupons. Ponzi used funds from new investors to pay fake “returns” to earlier investors.

    Crypto is literally exactly that but with electronic payments. That’s it, there is no service, there is no asset, there is no ownership without access, there is no value outside YOUR ability to resell it at a profit. THAT is a PONZI SCHEME. There’s no commodity to be gained like a stock, no institutional backing with fucking guns like a fiat currency. If you made money using crypto, cool, I congratulate you.

    Regardless of whether you are benefiting or not doesn’t stop it from being a scam, and shit I’ll even contend it’s probably more ethical capital accumulation than grenading bank wagons like Stalin did.

      • comrade_madoff@lemmygrad.ml
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        2 years ago

        Alright fine, you win. I obviously can’t win with some one who thinks all modes of trade are ponzi schemes.

        You’re right, I didn’t mean commodity, I meant ownership, thanks for pointing that out.

        What services are offered? Please give me examples, because the kinds of services I have seen advertised are all specifically only services because the crypto market exists in the first place, self servicing. Like acting as a 1 to 1 currency with stable coins, that still fail. Or coins that give you some kind of game asset that wouldn’t existed if the system wasn’t there in the first place. And honestly give me examples, I asked for a book or something to reference and it was totally ignored. I want to actually engage you on this, I don’t really give a shit if I’m wrong. I don’t have any crypto, I was interested in it and I read white papers for bitcoin and eth back in the day, and did some purchases and was utterly unconvinced, but please I insist actually give me a reference for me to address.

          • comrade_madoff@lemmygrad.ml
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            2 years ago

            Okay, so VeChain as I understand it is mostly just a distributed ledger with a currency attached to it. Honestly I think dlt’s and blockchain are interesting tech, they aren’t inherent to cryptocurrency and could be applied to other functions though like new digital medical records for instance. Why is there a currency even attached to vechain other than to commodify it? It could just be a digital ledger.

            XRP literally even says they function basically as SWIFT but ripple the company, it’s not XRP is the one that does it, XRP is just their vbucks they use as the middle man. It’s basically ETH but the ripple protocol manages the servers that host DLTs rather than trusted stake holders, the service is only fast because of the fees one company makes on transactions. It’s basically visa, but with crypto access. The only reason this service exists is as a function of cryptocurrency… like I mentioned.

            Amp and Flexa only exist if you’re trying to buy things with multiple currencies all at once. You understand what my problem is right?

            All of these services only exist to justify cryptocurrency’s existence. WHY DOES CRYPTOCURRENCY NEED TO EXIST IN THE FIRST PLACE?!

            XRP just fills the gap of SWIFT because SWIFT doesn’t recognize the validity of cryptocurrency, there is no reason that implementation could not be added, ripple just didn’t need international consent.

            VeChain’s function could be replicated without a financial aspect as the asset of vechain isn’t even the coin, it’s a ledger. It doesn’t require currency, the currency just exists to make an excuse for the creators of vechain to host the service rather than have it be self hosted. The crypto-currency part just seems like a way to commodify it into a rent service when it could just be a free protocol. Like ssh. I just don’t see the financial aspects of cryptocurrency being valuable.