Dash is not even remotely competitive. It is simply and purely a scam to steal money from the foolish and ignorant. The market cap of dash is an illusion created by temporarily removing most of the supply into masternodes which monitor all the transactions and insure that 90% of the network traffic goes through NSA controlled routers. When the scam bubble pops all of those masternodes will get liquidated in a huge rush to the exits, crushing all the innocent holders.
Foolish they may be, but I don't think the holders are so innocent. DASH is best understood as a novel
transparent Ponzi scheme. Duffield used to openly talked about crunching supply for the sake of raising the price so it's hardly a nefarious secret. Even today their marketing consists of creepy infomercial-like presentations designed to reel in new users. But the key is that those users go in consciously hoping to pull off the same on future buyers.
According to your definition also bitcoin can be considered as a ponzi scheme.
Basically anything that is valuable is with limited supply.
Basically Putin's watches can be considered as a ponzi scheme
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-06-06/putins-patek-philippe-5208p-grand-complication-for-auctionThey are with limited supply and the supply is tied to the wrist/collection of Putin.
Pump and dump I would call a scam but definetely not a pump. Pump and dump schemes are meant to rake money from the suckers but if Dash basically pumps, the hodlers will only benefit and the newcomers pay the spot and see some appreciation via hodling a bag, and with a good luck also gets some new coins via masternodes.
Pyramid I would call it Dash but it is not a bad thing necessarily.
That being said, I hope Dash will drop because I have bids. To speak to my book I should bash Dash.