It is hard to have a honest discussion related to the use of the word "fraud" when the conversation so easily flip flops between referring to bitcoin and/or referring to cryptocurrencies in general. There is a ton of fraud in the overall cryptocurrency space. As thousands of these tokens have come and gone over the last several years, there are well documented cases of fraud. Tezos and Ripple for example have lawsuits against them for just that. The space is ripe with fraud. It is akin to venture-capitalism that pushes hype above product. If your argument is against fraud in the whole space in general, then I'd agree completely with many of the comments being said. I think that is perhaps one of the largest hurdles for bitcoin to overcome, and that is trying to separate itself from the dirt of the overall industry.
Fidelity, coincidentally in fact, just came out with a new report titled "Bitcoin First" about how and why bitcoin is differentiated against the rest of the crowd.
https://www.fidelitydigitalassets.com/articles/bitcoin-first?sf253214177=1
If your argument then is that bitcoin itself is fraud, then I'd have to completely disagree with that stance. I think you'd be hard pressed to argue fraud in this instance where you have a completely open protocol that is completely decentralized without any authority or owner and everyone is free to educate and understand what this open network of participants is. There might be individual cases of fraud where an individual is "peddling" bitcoin as something it isn't or taking advantage of individuals' wealth in some fraud scheme unrelated to bitcoin itself. But I think it would be difficult to argue that bitcoin itself is the fraud. Anyone is free to participant and come and go as they please and the entire system is open and transparent. It is so transparent that anyone can host their own bitcoin node and completely verify every bitcoin transaction that has ever taken place. You can also completely verify the current supply yourself as well as verify the monetary rules that will dictate future supply. I'd love to hear genuine valid arguments as to how fraud applies here. The "ponzi" and "pyramid" arguments already fell flat, so if we're now just going with a general blanket "fraud" statement, I'd love to hear well reasoned arguments on how it applies here.
No, I stand by my statement that Bitcoin, itself, is fraud. And that it is, for all intents-and-purposes, a Ponzi scheme. I don't believe anyone even responded to my—I think—fairly reasoned arguments from
this previous post that classify it as such.
As I mentioned earlier, people often confused the speculative nature that often drives upward price swings with the idea that bitcoin has no utility outside of that speculation. But I'd love to hear them say that to #EndSARS protesters (Feminist Coalition) against police brutality in Nigeria who switched to funding their protests solely with bitcoin as the government shut off access to their bank accounts. Or the Russian opposition leader Navalny who raised over $3 million in bitcoin as his bank accounts were similarly shut down. Or the palestinians who used bitcoin to transact across the border during their conflict. Or the Belarus non-profit that used bitcoin to help fund protesters there. Or the impoverished family seeking remittances from their family member abroad. Or the Hong Kong protesters that turned to bitcoin for funding. Or the almost 2 billion people currently facing double-digit inflation or the 53% percent of the world living under an authoritarian government.
It is easy to falsely claim that bitcoin is used by criminals (even though less than 0.5% is used for actual illicit activity), when in reality bitcoin is used as a tool in fighting for individual freedom worldwide.
Ok, this is an important thing to clarify:
1. It stands that the VAST majority of people who own/use Bitcoin are doing so for speculative purposes
2. It also stands that the things you are describing are, in fact, illegal. Often times, law is very immoral. And in these cases, this is a good use-case. But it's important to acknowledge what's happening here—you're advocating for tools for bypassing the law.
What is clearly apparent in these forums (unsurprisingly) is that we have a bunch of privileged wealthy individuals who don't know what it is like to not have easy access to trustworthy financial services. We all have easy access to the stock market and transact from our reputable neighborhood credit unions that are all protected with countless consumer protection laws. We also are fortunate to earn our wealth with a currency that is backed by the strongest military in the world that also happens to hold reserve status around the world. They say we can pick our friend, but not our family. Well we also can't pick the country we're born into and for all too many their countries are stricken with government corruption and monetary instability.
Feel free to research any of the above instances I mentioned as they're all factual and there are countless more cases like them. This is bitcoin's utility right here and claiming that it can't do a lot of good for people in the world while sitting and an ivory tower and ignoring these cases isn't going to help your argument of claiming it is fraud.
Oh, please. Firstly: the average crypto investor is a 38 year old white man who makes $111k/year. 74% of crypto investors are men. 71% are white. Source:
https://cheddar.com/media/crypto-investor-white-male-survey-demographic-change What absolutely drives me nuts about this type of response, is it's such obvious bullshit. Crypto enthusiasts
only/ care about "the unbanked" or fighting authoritarianism when they can use it as a cheap talking point to pump crypto. Bitcoin was not designed from first-principles to fix these things. It's been post-hoc rationalized as a great solution for everything from venue ticketing to
fixing iced tea, to solving inequality and poverty in a cynical attempt to reverse-robinhood steal from these poor people.
Look at the El Salvador situation. Crypto zealots hate authoritarians. Unless they also help shill crypto. Bukele is now like a demi-god amongst bitcoiners. They cheer him on as he day-trades with public funds and hires known fraudsters to head up volcano bonds or bitcoin beach events.
Yes. We are generally a fortunate bunch here. There are lots of people with lots of terrible and difficult-to-solve problems in the world. It is the height of arrogance to think this thing you just so happen to profit from increased adoption of, is the solution to those problems.