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Comment by lottin | Hacker News Reader

Why do I have to apply the idea to dollars? Nobody is telling me that I will become incredibly rich, without having to put any effort, work or invent anything, if I just buy dollars. Yet the same claim is made about bitcoins, and this is why we must examine whether this claim about bitcoin is true.

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Read the white paper about bitcoin. Does it say anything about it being an investment, guaranteeing stability of exchanging rates to fiat, providing interest, or any appreciation? I'll be waiting for you to cite that.

There's a lot of disingenuous people out there, that for some reason believe bitcoin or other cryptos are "investments." I guess they missed that they are called crypto-CURRENCIES and not crypto-investments. And then they get upset that they are not, and go on to berate a currency for not being an investment. It's fine to be upset at any swindlers calling a zero-sum or negative-sum game like most crypto an investment, but if you actually read the white papers many cryptos make no such claims.

And there are certainty people telling you that you can get rich off dollars, just look at the FOREX trading peddlers telling you to get rich by trading fiat and leveraging fiat exchanges. I don't attack dollars for that!

And yeah, you can apply your idea to dollars, because one of the biggest way for the government to profit off of dollars is to print more out of thin air, therefore debasing the "investment" of the rest of the dollar holders. You can choose to not apply the idea to dollars, and rather bury your head in the sand if you like, that's your prerogative.

Again, there are no dollar influencers, with millions of followers, urging people to mortgage their homes to buy more dollars. That's because everybody knows you can't get rich by buying dollars, because dollars are not an investment. And something that isn't an investment can't be a pyramid scheme, because a pyramid scheme is a type of investment scheme. Therefore we must dismiss the idea that the dollar is a pyramid scheme. Bitcoin on the other hand is a pyramid scheme wrapped in a cult.

Of course you can get rich by buying dollars. Ever seen a street money changer? It's big business in places like Iraq, Argentina, and other places where dollars are desired. You can make a cut out of every dollar you sell for less desirable local currency, and then another cut when you use the less desirable currency to buy dollars from people who need local currency. Does that mean dollars are an investment?

There are certainly influencers as well influencing you to start FOREX trading changing dollars back and forth to get rich, or leveraging dollar exchanges in a zero sum game attempt to strike it big. This blog boasts a man made $6M trading USD and NZD [1].

You use circular logic that bitcoin is an investment because it is a pyramid scheme which is by your definition an investment. Then you say dollars are not an investment because "everybody knows you can't make money off dollars" (which is patently false.)

Some people may view bitcoin as an investment. Some people may view dollars as an investment. There is no requirement it be treated as one. Again the bitcoin whitepaper, and open implementation of it which you can readily acquire the source code to, makes no promises of returns, stability in exchange rate, or appreciation. Any pyramid scheme is the fault of some swindlers who could create a pyramid scheme in any number of currencies -- not "Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System." You seem bitter at bitcoin because you chose to take the word of swindlers rather than the actual white paper and public implementation which made no such promise of profits.

[1] https://forextradingstrategies4u.com/millionaire-forex-trade...

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