First, understanding the role of money. Money was created out of barter. Alice grows corn (competitive advantage, lower cost to produce corn). Bob grows wheat (competitive advantage, lower cost to produce wheat). Alice and Bob trade corn and wheat. There is an equilibrium or close to it in the barter system or fairness in the barter, otherwise Alice and Bob would not trade with each other. Thus, the characteristics of sounded money has to have this close equilibrium as in barter.

Bitcoin is not sounded money.

Some people call Bitcoin a ponzi scheme without understanding what the term means. To them, it's an all encompassing term for scam. Stop calling it a ponzi scheme. Bitcoin does not fit the definition of ponzi scheme. Bitcoin fits under the broader term, scam.

BITCOIN IS A PYRAMID SCHEME.

Bitcoin can be separated into two components:
A) the distributed peer-to-peer payment technology
B) the Bitcoin scheme, monetary, method of creation and issuing new coins

The technology part is not the problem. You can have a pyramid scheme over the postal mail system, something like Mailcoin, but it would not be as efficient and will not have the exponential growth than a distributed p2p network has over the Internet.

The monetary part is where the pyramid scheme for Bitcoin is concocted. The early adopters control a huge percentage of BTC and the Pharaoh (Satoshi) controls the most BTC. Immediately that should give an objective person alarm bell that there is something wrong with this picture.

If a new participant were to enter Bitcoin, mining for BTC is astronomically difficult. At the same computing power, a new participant would take more than a million years to get 50 BTC compare to what Satoshi got in 10 minutes at the beginning. That is not how money should work. So, new participants have to use real world currency to buy into Bitcoin, this is where value is flowing up the pyramid.

People that have 1 or more BTC have some skin in Bitcoin, so this make it hard for some to be rational and objective about the Bitcoin scheme. I hope some will step outside the box and take a hard look at it. Some Bitcoiners might know it is a pyramid scheme, but lack the ethical conscience to care. These Bitcoiners are marketing and pumping Bitcoin to get new participants to enter, thus driving the price of Bitcoin up and then cash out with the gains.

For new people that want to get in on Bitcoin, I hope you take an objective view of Bitcoin. If you do choice to buy into Bitcoin with real world currency, just hope you are not one of the many at the bottom of the pyramid left holding the bag when this thing collapses. I am not here to judge your morality. Keep in mind, you are participating in this fraud.