(Obviously this is based on the view of cryptocurrency as purely speculative, not as an actual currency with which to buy things, but even now, it's still pretty difficult to buy a lot of things with Bitcoins.)
The acquisition of bitcoin by newcomers in no way enriches earlier adopters, as in a classic pyramid scheme. Miners continually invest huge sums in capital equipment with the hope that the price continues to rise. If it does not, they are toast. This is not gambling or a Ponzi; this is just a risk/reward business decision. It's the exact decision that the capitalist makes when she decides to build a new production line at the factory.
Buying bitcoin early is like investing early in any new technology: it could be worth nothing, or it could go bananas. Many alt-coins have trickled down to very low prices over time or stopped functioning altogether. There are no sure things in this space, even for the early adopters.
Of course it does. Bitcoin used to be at $1, now it's at $1,xxx. What happened in between was a massive influx of newcomers.
The difference to, for example, the stock market is in the "underlying value". If I buy some stock and it's price collapsed the next day, I'm still entitled to my share of future profits etc. If the company is sound, I have lost nothing.
A ponzi scheme's underlying value is only the future growth of the scheme itself.
I'd say the jury is still out for bitcoin et alt: how much of the growth is being fuelled by speculation, and to what extend is that speculation actually speculating on future speculation?
Bitcoin is a payment network (Even if the price collapses to really low).
Ethereum is a smart contracts platform, so you can still build certain kind of apps on it even if it's price collapses.
A ponzi scheme as NO business model (or the business model claimed, isn't a valid one).
Using bitcoin I can actually transfer wealth from one part of the world to another, similarly using Ethereum I can create decentralized applications funded by payment (like pay-to-seed bit torrent network).
That Bitcoin is speculation, a brand, and useful in some ways - that is why it can be sustained ... because the network of speculators/investors is global, and people with $100 or people with $10s of millions that want to gamble can join in on.
The 'single issuer' could also be considered the Bitcoin blockchain itself.
Years ago I met someone who sold off $20MM+ of Bitcoin, bought real estate for rentals, then bought more Bitcoin when low to rinse and repeat. How many people are doing this which keeps Bitcoin going, while slowly increasing the price? It could easily be 50%+ of money, of course everyone with Bitcoin is incentivized to increase adoption - so their Bitcoin doesn't become worthless, and so in fact it becomes worth 100x.
The 11 level limit intersecting with time will dictate how much time Bitcoin folks have to gain mass adoption..
It's now at $2,4xx.
Let's assume the newcomer is a miner, spending money to acquire the newly-created bitcoins from block coinbase transactions. That new money is created through inflation, which makes all existing bitcoin less-scarce. The miner must pay electricity costs, probably in terms of fiat currency, so there is continual sell pressure from coin inflation.
That doesn't sound like it enriches earlier adopters. Rather, mining hurts the value of earlier coins through the two mechanisms of inflation and continual selling pressure.
If the newcomer purchases bitcoin on an exchange, then it may cause upward pressure on the price (it depends on market conditions / liquidity). If the newcomers are purchasing bitcoin at a slower rate than the miners produce & sell, then there may be a decreasing price.
And finally, those with lots of coins cannot simply dump them on exchanges and expect not to drive down the price.
There is no direct mechanism whereby newcomers to bitcoin enrich existing holders. Instead, all value is derived from market forces of supply & demand on the exchanges. Bitcoin is no more a Ponzi / pyramid than Google stock.
And you can bet those who bought at $1 sold all they had at $10 ("wow, it's like 10 times what I invested, this is insane, this probably won't go any further!"), those who bought at $10 sold everything at best at $100, those who bought at $100 sold at $1000, etc. Actually, I'm not sure the people bitcoin made rich are that many. I have yet to see an article explaining how someone got millionaire by getting early into bitcoin.
As for fundamentals, the underlying value of cryptocurrencies is to be a store of value that is not as easily stolen than cash, while still not sitting in at a bank. You can see it as cash that can be transmitted over the network, in small or big amount (and quite fast in that case, comparatively to a wire transfer). Of course, whether this tech will become mainstream is yet to be seen, it can still fail. On the other hand, the company you bought stocks from can also bankrupt and close.
That argument does not follow. An equivalent argument is:
"A house in San Francisco used to cost at $100k, now it costs $1000k. What happened was a massive influx of new people to San Francisco."
What happened is that the utility of a house in San Francisco changed and no one was willing to sell below $1000k.
Seems pretty reasonable to me.
Real estate crashes when the last marginal buyer is priced out of the market. California real estate has crashed 2-3 times just in my lifetime. It will crash again and whoever bought at the top will be bagholders. It is the immutable law of bubbles.
Doesn't it though? The reason we're talking about ethereum here is because it's got the best adoption of any of the newer altcoins. And the more people talk about these altcoins the better they seem to do. Hence things like "this is good for bitcoin", they're trying to get buy in.
As OP pointed out, everyone who is investing in mining / purchasing these coins is hoping they will be a store of value that will appreciate. At some level, it's no different from betting on specific commodities. No one is promising anything. I think that's an important distinction.
>there is no guarantee of return, or even the promise of return
You should check out some altcoin subreddits and /biz/ and I think you might disagree with yourself.
"Frgtpsswrdlame-coin is going to the moon! You guys need to hop onto this, I already have a 100% return. Plus it's safe because frgtpsswrdlame-coin has <encryption gibberish>. It's still early so get in!"
"Buy the dip! If you look at frgtpsswrdlame-coin's charts you can see that there's a <technical analysis gibberish> pattern forming which means this is going to bounce right back!"
Perhaps what seperates this from a more traditional pyramid scheme like door-to-door knife sales is that you can't point to the guy who convinced you to buy in and you can't point to the guys at the top of the hierarchy but they still exist and they still misled you. It's just obfuscated because of the internet.
Look, every Ponzi that ever existed has anecdotes about those who made it big--it's part of the con. Getting rich quick is the dream of every peon everywhere.
If that's all it takes to be a pyramid scheme, then any high-growth stock is a pyramid scheme. I could have struck it rich by buying Apple in 1999, but I don't think it would happen now.
There have been stock swindles in the past--the 1800s up to the 1920s were full of them. There have been insurance and bond swindles, too.
High growth stocks may be bubbles, but are not pyramid schemes.
To argue that's a Ponzi scheme reduces down to arguing that the entire economy is a Ponzi scheme. There are some Marxists who argue that. If that's true we have bigger problems.
Bitcoin, ethereum, dollars, euro - there isn't anything fundamentally different. Printed money is just that, and the guy who controls the printer can choose to print more and inflate the currency. But we all believe it's worth something... Because we believe it. It's a tautology. Cryptocurrencies are no different.
Consider this: Would divers risk their lives to recover paper money from a sunken 1930s era shipwreck? Yet for gold or silver, they will readily do that. I'm not gold bug, but I can understand why--gold and silver have a loooong history as stores of wealth. That's probably more important than any other consideration--how long has the "money" been "money?"
Replace "mining" with investing and currency with stock and tada.
That's not a pyramid scheme, that's risk/reward investing 101.
It's still a little scary, but I'd say it's less scary than safety-critical embedded code.
Gold, like fiat currency, like "cryptocoins" are all just stores of value that a market sets a value to.
The people that were born early win out, and the people who are born later have less and less chances of striking it rich.
So human societies in general.
Never said we weren't generally better off. But none of us have a shot at being oil barons, logging millionaires, retail moguls, etc.
Striking it rich now generally means achieving a higher level of knowledge and education first, then you can try to make your mark.
The previous generation hordes vast sums of wealth from endeavors that required less up front preparation and less capital (which was often provided rather no strings attached by the government, a tap which is being shut off (look at IBM's history of being gifted government funded inventions, among others)).