It is exactly that. A Ponzi scheme designed to steal from the ignorant.
I have railed against bitcoin and other crypto since last Summer in the Dallas Forum. Someone started a thread... ''The crypto craze''. I challenged posters to explain why it is valuable, how you know what it is worth? None could tell me. Most responded with ''it is going to be the new currency''. I asked why did it crash in 2018? Crickets.
The funniest shit I hear about bitcoin and crypto, is that it's an inflation hedge, a store of value. Huh?? Man, people can be so ignorant.
Originally Posted by Chung Tran
it's not an inflation hedge. it's not a ponzi scheme either. it was designed to be a internet based currency using the blockchain mining concept to make it an independent and open source banking mechanism.
Mining is what runs bitcoin and maintains a ledger (blockchain) of all transactions that logs who owns what bitcoins. The ledger is distributed and stored on all mining computers. Groups of miners called Pools verify transaction algorithms. These are 256bit encrypted (SHA-256). As algorithms get solved and bitcoin transfers are confirmed, miners are paid in bitcoin. The difficulty of these algorithms is ever changing to maintain a steady flow of bitcoin rewards. As more hash power (computing power) is added to the network the difficulty goes up.
The transactional security is from the number of miners in the network that have to confirm a transaction. You can't just hack one and steal the transfer. You'd have to guess which miners are involved out of hundreds of thousands to be able to intercept a transaction.
The network is self sustaining, as the BTC price drops it actually can become unprofitable to mine. It can be better for miners to turn off their machines as it takes more electricity to run the miner than the btc reward they can get. As less hash power is available the difficulty auto adjusts to maintain a steady flow of BTC rewards. A miner losing money is still paid Bitcoin so a lot leave them on still, as the BTC price increases they can still turn a profit.
Every 4 years the reward amount is cut in half. Usually a large increase in price of BTC follows. One day in next 10-20-30 years 1 BTC will be worth in the millions. But it will fluctuate.
Originally Posted by royamcr
perfect description of the bitcoin environment and the mining process, without the mining process which was meant to keep crypto independent there is no bitcoin. and the built in factors regulate the value and prevent control i.e. keeping the concept independent.
and most importantly viable as a transaction currency
Terrific. You told us how it works. Now tell me why it's valuable to me as an investment.
Originally Posted by Chung Tran
why do you buy a stock? because you think it's going to go up in value. if it does your investment goes up. of course like corporate stocks the value goes up and goes down. unlike stocks bitcoin does not pay a dividend to you as a holder. it does pay a dividend to miners. which keeps it self sustaining as a transaction currency.
the key to holders of bitcoin as an investment is to cash out at peaks and buy at lows. sound familiar? just like the stock market.
while bitcoin has no tangible assets like a corporation it has tangible profits to miners who sustain the process. the mining process makes bitcoin (and all other crypto) self sustaining like a corporation that is profitable.