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Comment by dathinab | Hacker News Reader

I read an article recently which claimed that the majority of transaction volume is not speculation, but scams, fraud and similar. Like e.g. pyramid schemes.

And that is where an average football fan needs crypto, to provide more monetary volume for scams and speculators manipulating the marked to siphon of.

Or at least that was the take of the article, I'm not completely sure in either direction.

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The difference between "speculation" and "scams, fraud, and similar" is in the eye of the beholder. Lots of people find all crypto to be a giant scam, others find all of it to be a potential investment (hopefully with the understanding that the long-tail of individual investments in the space will go to zero).

> The difference between "speculation" and "scams, fraud, and similar" is in the eye of the beholder.

The definitions of those terms really comes down to intention: a scammer is selling something they _know_ does not deliver what they're promising while a speculator should be making good-faith claims. This line gets blurry with optimism but most of the cryptocurrency speculation which called out is indeed misrepresentation of what a potential buyer would get, such as claiming that an NFT conveys ownership when it does not.

Just FYI - that is a _deeply_ unconvincing argument where you are effectively saying "sure it's a scam (the one you know), but I have since updated _my_ definition of scam; and let me tell you - it sure did make me some money and avoid a lot of cognitive dissonance!"

Like calling a pyramid scheme a reverse funnel system.

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