Most coins are following BTC (or vice versa) if you look at the charts. BTC follows SP500 (or vice versa) if you looks at the charts. There is no advantage to investing in a coins unless you're on the ground floor and you hold a sizable piece by default. Is SP500 an ponzi-like scheme? Are stock in general a ponzi-like scheme? Even if they are, you just need to not be the bigger fool and your good.
As a matter of fact, it sort of is. Look up Cede & Co and the Depository Trust Co.
"While private-company stock is still directly owned by shareholders, nearly all publicly traded equities and a majority of bonds are owned by a little-known partnership, Cede & Co., which is the nominee of the Depository Trust Co., a depository that holds securities for some 600 broker-dealers and banks. For each security, Cede & Co. owns a master certificate known as the "global security," which never leaves its vault. Transactions are recorded as debits and credits to DTC members' securities accounts, but the registered owner of the securities — Cede & Co. — remains the same.
What shareholders have rather than direct ownership, then, "is a [contractual] right against their broker...The broker then has a right against the depository institution where they have membership. Then the depository institution is beholden to the issuer. It's [at least] a three-step process before you get any rights to your stock." -American Banker, July 27, 2016 [0]
"We have all been sold the fiction that when we buy a stock, we have become proud owners of a great American corporation. Our investment is funding that Company and America’s growth. This is not an accurate description. As I will show in this report, we are actually involved in commodity trading of street name securities in which the trading of and record keeping is completely controlled by DTCC and the elite Wall Street firms with no transparency for outsiders. Operating in this black hole of important information they use loopholes in the clearing and settlement system administered by DTCC and loopholes in the ineffective SHO regulations to create counterfeit shares at will. They can and do expand the supply of street name securities through creating counterfeit shares to overwhelm demand and drive down the stock price." [0]
