I'm sorry, I don't understand what you mean with "Bitcoin as practiced". "Bitcoin as practiced" made Bitcoin into a scam while it wasn't one before "it was practiced"?
Bitcoin as practised is a Ponzi scheme (I say it's valued $5 and if you want to join my cool buddies you need to pay $5 and we paid $0, the next person needs to pay $10 and so on and the value disappears if we don't get new people to our cool clique).
The way it works (place data in a file, distribute file to everyone, use cryptography to verify that data in file placed by $someone is valid) is great.
If Bitcoin is a Ponzi scheme, then fiat currencies are even worse.
The central bank plainly admits a 2.5% inflation target. That means they capture all progress in technology that allows daily life to be cheaper, and on top of that dilutes the purchasing power a further 2.5% per year.
Ever since the fiat system was implemented, the gap between the rich and poor has been increasing.
> If Bitcoin is a Ponzi scheme, then fiat currencies are even worse.
Fiat wasn't mentioned here, unless you want to argue that I purposely specified US dollars - I did so because of easy numbers.
Just because one way of handling currency sucks, it doesn't mean it justifies crypto, which sucks but way worse (because it can be abused by entire population instead of several hundred governments).
> Bitcoin is one way to side-step this debasement.
It isn't. It's not being used for payments. People hold it (or, to be fully crypto-compatible - HODL).
Its network is slow, we all know it's 7 TPS.
It requires too much processing power.
And the list goes on.
It's being used as a Ponzi scheme, the difference between crypto and fiat is that regular mortals have access to scam too, not only the governments.
You didn't say a word about how the value is being added to BTC, but I guess that's what your fiat comparison was about. I'm sorry, but you sound like regular crypto-bro who doesn't actually grasp how things work but thinks they do.
If you want to sell me a Bitcoin with the promise that I'll be able to sell it for more in the future, then that'd be a scam. But if you just sell it to me without any promise of future profits, would it still be a scam in that scam?
None the less, it does sound like Bitcoin itself is not a scam in this scenario, but rather there are scammers who use Bitcoin to perform their scams. Not that Bitcoin itself is a scam. Would that be correct?
> don't understand what you mean with "Bitcoin as practiced"
The paper and concept are fine. People marketing Bitcoin as an investment, et cetera, or more broadly selling anything related to it, are enabling a scam.
Ok, so Bitcoin itself is not a scam, but people can use it to do scams?
That makes sense and I'd agree with that. Author of the submission don't seem to think that's a useful distinction though, which seems slightly extreme.
I'm not sure why that should necessarily be the case. E.g. if a vendor sells a legitimate good and accepts bitcoin as an alternative mode of payment to fiat, and the buyer acquired those coins in a legitimate manner, in what way is that perpetuating a scam? Isn't that the original purpose outlined in the whitepaper?
I'm sorry, I don't understand what you mean with "Bitcoin as practiced". "Bitcoin as practiced" made Bitcoin into a scam while it wasn't one before "it was practiced"?