> I keep waiting for the Crypto ponzi scheme to burst.

Previously Ponzi schemes were limited in geographic area, so you'd be limited to the number of marks you could go after, either through travel limits or the number of people you could meet through 'friends of friends'. This could grow a bit if you were 'successful' enough and could establish a reputation (e.g., Madoff).

Online schemes do not have geographic limits and so there's always a fresh source of unknowledgeable persons to go after.

Further, most traditional Ponzi schemes are of the form that you'll receive x% returns (e.g., dividends) per year, but Crypto is more akin to:

> In finance and economics, the greater fool theory states that the price of an asset is determined by whether you can sell it for a higher price, at a later point in time. On assets where the theory applies, it is implied that the asset's intrinsic value is less important than the increase in demand, however irrational it might be. The person buying the overpriced asset later on, for a higher price, is deemed the greater fool.[1][2][3][4]

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_fool_theory

One lesson of the medieval period is that that when the previous society(Rome) breaks down, a period of mysticism sweeps in, from which the new society emerges. This happens on a smaller scale with e.g. "Great Awakenings". Mysticism normalizes a reality, and therefore it doesn't obey the rules of reason, rather, great efforts are made to rationalize its existence from a pragmatic beginning. Philosophers cannot reach agreement on what is good for people, so religious experiences fill in the gap, and that's always been the case with the economy too.

People used to believe that conquests made wealth; gradually they became convinced that productivity made wealth. Productivity is now on the chopping block, since it is seen as something that's killing the planet with inexhaustible resource demand. We're looking for the next way of seeing things. Crypto doesn't make sense now, and I say that as someone deeply invested in it, but it has that kind of potential to change our frame of reference after an awkward transition takes place. Maybe it makes sense if we go further with it. The experiment is in progress, but it's already exceeded the usual bounds of a cult or scam.

It’s only been around for 10-ish years. As someone that is interested in crypto, and actively participates in not only buying, but using it, I think we’re a far ways off from the bubble bursting completely. Market cycles will happen, projects will die, but I think crypto is here to stay. The bigger question is how far does it spread. It works incredibly well at putting money into the hands of people that have never had it before. The number of high school and college drop outs that I know, who now have more money than most people on earth is staggering.

It doesn't burst because it's not actually a ponzi scheme.

Crypto still is small enough that a couple billion dollars can bail the system out. It only took a few billions to pump it up to $25k in 2017. At some point the amount it takes to bail them out will be larger than any of the billionaire true believer investors are willing to throw into the pot and will exceed their ability to agree with each other to risk that much to save it.

It isn't really an economic problem, it is more like a poker game.

The next market crash will probably be from a substantially higher peak and will take proportionately more to bail it out, and it is also going to be complicated by governments taking the opportunity to crack down on it so "regulatory risk" will be very high. 2022/2023 are probably going to have a high risk of the game collapsing.

Won't be 100% though so it could come back and another ~4 years from now we could be seeing yet another bubble blowing up in crypto. I wouldn't get too emotionally attached to hating crypto or believing that a sudden regulatory attack on crypto is going to manage to pop crypto in the near term (and what China did recently was the kind of crackdown that everyone believed would kill it, but its dragging itself out of the hole again).

Right now chances of it popping in the short term are probably very low, and nobody is going to seriously take a run at regulating it because they don't want to be responsible for the fallout (similarly to how nobody did shit about Madoff's Ponzi until he went cash insolvent in 2008 due to the financial crisis).

I think the quote "the stock market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent" can be very much applied to cryptocurrency as well.

I have a feeling that this market stays up because the previous one has just enough flaws to allow the other to be believable, whether or not crypto will provide something useful.. I don't know.

Yeah me too, it should be clear with the whole tether thing by now that it's way way overrated.

But noon-techies i know bought an experiment with it and i was kinda suprised. I guess they are going for too big to fail.

A lot of "big money" had joined the crypto thing and it's making themv curious: "eg. all these big corporations can't be wrong".

I don't blame that they try now though, although I warn them. It's really getting surreal.

Note : I left crypto behind me in late 2017 at 18 k. Didn't trust it anymore and nothing changed.

Because we haven't had a recession yet which caused a major net outflow from cryptocurrencies.

Some cryptocurrencies can survive a major net outflow, but some, especially the stablecoins with weak backing, (i.e. Tether) cannot.

The big lesson of cryptocurrencies is that the market for money laundering services is much larger than previously supposed.

I'm waiting for whole stock market and everything else to burst... But when you think about how central banks and governments are handling it and all the money around it makes lot more sense how it is still going on.

Well, there's always value in enabling money laundering and purchasing of illegal goods. Bitcoin has lots of uses, I just don't think they're the ones the doe eyed idealists like to talk about.

As long it can be used as a currency it will keep a value above zero. It will die just like any other currency, which is to say the day when the market refuse to take the currency in exchange for goods.

Because if you draw the boundary around the ponzi scheme wide enough nobody realizes it's a scheme. E.g US$