The people gaming the system to increase its "value" have slowly brought the price up - and they will keep working together (indirectly and directly) to convince/manipulate/trick consumers into buying into this global, decentralized Ponzi-Pyramid scheme to further their wealth through unreasonably redistributing wealth towards earlier adopters - while increasing the "army of HODLers" who now have vested interested in pushing these crypto-"currencies." Everyone who's lost money to the earlier adopters are heavily incentivized to talk positively and promote them so they can attempt to at minimum break even from their losses - which is the main mechanism as to why these are so dangerous for society, the incentive and alignment of working together - to adopt something that has shown little to no value to society; blockchain is a separate conversation as to its value for society. The "killer app" that no one seems to have been able to create for society yet seems to actually be that its structure allows for a Pyramid-Ponzi scheme - and the people selling the shovels during this modern gold rush seem to be the ones best capitalizing on the hype and frenzy.
It also helps when you can print "Tether" out of thin air to manipulate the price until the media notices and you can get grandma and grandpa pulled into the scam.
Are you against any asset where visionaries got in early? VCs and wealthy investors reap the vast majority of rewards when companies like Uber go public, and let the retail investors hold the bag. I don’t see much of a moral difference.
I'm not sure if you're purposefully trying to conflate legitimate stock market companies with the likes of Bernard Madoff Ponzi Scheme et al?
And are you trying to argue the VC industrial complex is the best and/or only method of developing large, useful organizations who develop products and services?
You can make an argument against the asset itself and it’s utility. But parent was arguing that the fact early adopters captured a majority of the gains makes Bitcoin evil doesn’t make sense to me. I’m happy that crypto nerds won this time over the usual suspects of VCs, family funds, etc.
What value has Bitcoin et al brought anyone other than earning them "profit" because they were earlier in the Pyramid-Ponzi scheme - or at a low point before price went up and sold before the bubble(s) popped?
Ok, I'm not a huge fan of the crypto craze, but ignoring providing a solution to the problem of trust in decentralized networks and implementing a working payment network on top of that is just a blatant ignorance.
The solution is massively unelegant and unlikely to be worth so much long-term as markets are predicting now, but it definitely does provide some tangible value and it's pretty stupid to imply otherwise.
Simply asking for what value has Bitcoin et al provided isn't the same as a statement that states it doesn't cover some areas of value, however pros existing doesn't necessarily negate the cons - doesn't mean there's a net benefit to them existing. Ignoring that a solution for 'trust in decentralized networks' can't be solved in other ways, like normal real-life trust networks, where people make a decision of who they trust for this vs. having "blind trust" is in fact blatant ignorance.
Albeit Uber is overvalued for the service they provide, and their play is one of the VC industrial complex to ramp up to high value as quickly as possible in the eyes of the financial markets (large money pool controllers) to get on stock market at unreasonable valuation, exit some early investors/founders and provide a fun lifestyle for themselves during the process - offloading risk to general public, society via the IPO etc.
