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About the Author: The Gravel Institute

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  1. Bitcoin is a fiat currency in my mind, but the force here would be not trusting other fiats, is it a house of cards? most certainly. Id argue tho that all economies are a house of cards, Bitcoin just doesnt have an army and a state pretending its not

  2. to cryptodweebs out here, they're talking about crypto in its current us: not as a currency but as an investment.

    kinda sad that a currency is now used like stocks

  3. He didn't seem to interrogate any of the good claims crypto proponents make. He also didn't link any of the negative claims to crypto currencies. It was just "This is what a bitcoin is" then "this is what a ponzi scheme is". Simply juxtaposing two things you don't like doesn't explain how they're related. Where's the investigation of how the general trend of bitcoin is an increase in value vs. the dollar generally decreasing in value. If your goal is to save, not spend, then over time you're risking more keeping your wealth in dollars, never mind the collapsing currencies of failing states. Where's the investigation of saving literal billions in remittance payments. To bring up energy costs in a vacuum without comparing them against the energy costs of the traditional financial system is straight up propaganda. How can you just ignore the fact that your bank account can be frozen or hacked through no fault of your own while crypto wallets are only as vulnerable as you are stupid.

  4. Holy shit this video is so wrong on this one.

    1. If bitcoin is a ponzi scheme than you also MUST include gold, silver, stocks, real-estate as a scheme. There are all bought with the expectation that it will go up in the future.
    But but but, gold, silver, etc has a use you say. So does bitcoin! Please try to transfer money to your family say in Argentina. How would that happen? Drive down to the wire lender, wait in line, hand over sensitive information, pay massive fees, wait days for the money to be cleared… now with bitcoin its pressing a button from your phone, instant transaction with a fraction of a fraction of the fees. The world can benefit greatly from this adoption. Now lets also include the USD failing as a fiat currency. Yes, bitcoin has massive value.
    2. Ponzie scheme cannot exist on a limited supply asset. Have you ever heard of a ponzie with physical gold!? No. Because it has value and is rare its value will increase naturally over time.
    3. But bitcoin is volatile! Yea, that is neither good nor bad. Amazon dropped 90% in 2001 and dropped 50% 6 more times in its existence yet you would be insanely wealthy if you just held.
    4. But its a speculation! Isnt everything? Dont you buy a stock thinking it will go up? Dont you buy a house thinking its value will increase? Dont you buy bitcoin for many of the reasons i listed above..?
    5. But bitcoin uses up sooooo much electricity. It does, but the miners are incentivized to reduce their power costs and usage as much as possible. But when compared to the current financial system bitcoin only uses a fraction of 1%.
    6. If bitcoin is a ponzie than why is the richest in the world, the banks, the smartest among us buying it as well?

    This video is just a boomer than cannot get past his own bias.

  5. Normally I agree with the content on this channel. But not gonna lie this video has shaken my faith in the validity of this channel as it shows a stunning lack of comprehension of even basic market economics.

    The logic applied here as he claims it here readily applies to ANY market. Stock market, precious metal market, etc. All of which are speculation. Further it very much conflates the classic ponzi scheme with basic human psychology in a capitalist system.

    Further. There's no one person behind it. So the people out there shilling it as a "get rich quick" scheme aren't actually affiliated with the network and are not only behaving incredibly irresponsibly, but they are a symptom of many markets aside from cryptocurrency. There are plenty of good faith actors in the space as well. Doing their part to err on the side of caution and proper investment techniques and long term thinking that openly bash these irresponsible people. And this video purposefully outright ignores those folks.

    A ponzi scheme is designed to make a person or group of people rich by feeding of the money of it's investors, usually in a supposed exchange of something of either value or service that isn't realistic.

    The exact definition after a quick Google is "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."

    There is no such person or group of people to make wealthy at the heart of Bitcoin or any other responsibly made cryptocurrency. And by its very nature the Bitcoin system is an open source decentralized ledger. Meaning anyone can simply look up and verify that not only does its line of code exist, but that it behaves as intended with a little bit of technical skill. So it's by definition not a ponzi scheme. And before people chime in about first movers getting rich off of the backs of subsequent buyers, consider these two points:

    1.) This is a symptom of any market based approach to anything in a capitalist system and is on the whole standard for any market.

    2.) There are plenty of distribution methods and tactics that other Blockchains use at launch to try to minimize the effects of abuse such as designated airdrops.

    Further, this video shows an utterly stunning lack of awareness of the market as a whole and what it offers. Especially in terms of use case. And while the facts designated in this video aren't necessarily incorrect, they are most certainly not correct either and takes a very pessimistic and skeptical approach to the subject with lots of cherry picking of information. For instance, the video points out that Bitcoin consumes a monstrous amount of energy, but leaves out the fact that the same is true for the legacy financial system.

    Now with this being said, as he pointed out, the scaling of Bitcoin technology (called proof of work) is woefully inefficient and doesn't scale well at all. So as a means of transacting for everyday life Bitcoin as he rightly points out is pretty useless and if scaled to the same level as the legacy system would consume way more energy. And this makes sense. Bitcoin was the first application of blockchain technology and rarely do humans get something right the first time. But with time and iteration these things can be improved. Even still BTC can still be utilized as a store of value based off of simple supply and demand and has seen ready adoption by not only individuals but prominent businesses and even entire countries. But also he leaves out that other projects have stepped up to either offer improvements to the Bitcoin Blockchain or have launched entirely new Blockchains to solve these issues or to even offer entirely different uses utilizing the underlying technology of Blockchain. Consensus mechanisms such as proof of stake and proof of consensus all have their unique advantages and disadvantages that can be utilized and while not perfect can generally be regarded as a significant improvement to bitcoins particular method of validation. To shoehorn all of the cryptocurrency space is both ill-informed and woefully irresponsible.

    There are other issues with this video. But I think this is a pretty good start at least.

  6. The gas price on ethereum is so high it makes it pointless to use as a currency. It cost me $18 worth of ETH to spend $50 of it. Dogecoin is a much better candidate for an actual digital currency but the time to get in and actually make any $$ on it was 10 years ago when everyone started mining it.

  7. I just want to build a new gaming pc, but gpus are wicked expensive

    The only thing you buy with Bitcoin is drugs.
    But, the only drugs I’d buy would be things like shrooms, mostly for micro dosing.

    But, I’m in Boston and don’t know anyone who’s holding 🙁

  8. Great video! my dad is bitcoin brain washed Elon Musk boot licker (sorry dad) so I'm trying to show him that it's a scam. I keep showing him things, but he's not really acclimated with Marxism, so this one (being much simpler) was a great watch for him.

  9. Still holding onto my DogeCoin IMO the entire stock market is a gamble unless you're investing in Index. This video does a good job of helping to point out the problems with it.

  10. El Salvador makes Bitcoin legal tender, ukraine adopts and legalizes cryptocurrency, the State of Texas legalizes Bitcoin and adopts it within it's constitution, Panamanian legislature introduces bill to legalize Bitcoin as currency, etc. the list goes on and on . Only an idiot still thinks Bitcoin is a scam. Adoption of Bitcoin has now doubled the rate of adoption of the internet when it first came out in 1995.Yes sir Bitcoin is a scam alright. Lol. I suspect that most people who think Bitcoin is a scam are the ones who feel regret for not having bought in early when it was a buck a piece.

  11. lol to all the haters out there, have fun staying poor.

    the idea that its a ponzi scheme bc the ppl that buy at the top will be held holding the bag is ridicules, if you truly believe this then we should abolish the stock market.

  12. Bitcoin is not an investment. This video makes it sound like you got scammed by bitcoin and got butthurt. Its a technology and a future for finance without government oversight. Less control to central entities is good, and its super weird to see it spun into a negative scam instead of a live uncontrolled market. Really weird @Gravel Institute.

  13. For the corrupts corporations of course, what else can be worse than the economy manipulations from the FMI or the games from wall street and big Corp. Or ONGS… BITCOINS IS JUST STARTING… just put your eyes in a small latin country how it was and how will chance little by little…. Don't forget their is therm power like iceland… I don't agree with this report… HOW COME I SEE EACH DAY MORE AND MORE BITCOINS ATM'S IN SOME CONVENIENCE STORE LIJE SEVEN ELEVEN…. CORP. DONT INVEST MONEY WHERE TGERE IS NOT PROFITS.

  14. 2009: The first Bitcoin is generated.
    2010: "Only a fad. Nobody will ever use it."
    2012: "Only computer nerds understand it."
    2013: "Only drug dealers use it for crime."
    2015: "Only money launderers use it to hide cash."
    2017: "Only high risk gamblers use it and it’s a bubble."
    2018: "Only ponzi schemers use it and it just crashed."
    2019: "Only a couple people even know how any of this works."
    2020: "Only a few tech companies support it.”
    2021: "Only unbanked countries actually allow it as legal tender."
    2022: "Only took ten years to reach $100,000."
    2140: "Only one planet uses it as a permisionless store of uninflatable value. Might be a scam."

  15. Venturing into the trading world without the help of a professional trader and expecting profits is like turning water into wine, you would need a miracle, that's why i trade with Christi lily, her skills set is exceptional..

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