Nope. No one is being deceived. A Ponzi scheme pretends to be based on legitimate equities and value and is therefore a fraud. Bitcoin makes no such claim.
I'm no crypto currency fanboi, but I feel no need to commit the intellectual fraud of misapplying well understood concepts to denigrate it. Every couple of months, however, someone decides they can score some clicks by yelling 'Ponzi' and we get this headline again.
In addition to being tedious it's also dangerous. Blockchain and cryptocurrency is new phenomena and we don't yet know what value there is here. We can, however, confidently assume that if the false narrative that Bitcoin is a Ponzi Scheme is successfully applied The Great And The Good will suddenly discover the moral obligation to crush it out of existence and criminalize everyone involved.
That possibility worries me far more than whatever part of the status quo bitcoin might disrupt.
And it puts the blatant “Join the Ponzi scheme early!” stuff I’ve seen on crypto forums into an amusing paradoxical state.
Blockchain and cryptocurrency is over a decade old. Several lifetimes in tech. So far the use appears to be speculation, fraud and burning through electricity as fast as possible.
I hope they do crush it, for that last bit alone if nothing else.