Quote from: Rich Tator on February 05, 2025, 03:38:58 PM

Is anyone open to the idea that Satoshi invented a **brilliant** new type of sustainable Ponzi scheme, unlike anything the world ever saw before? Please, turn off your "flame-throwers", and understand there are some obvious similarities - like extreme wealth for the early participants & the way new money needs to keep coming in, or prices will fall sharply, etc. Once you understand the similarities and the way BTC is apparently sustainable, is there anything wrong with being a brilliant new type of Ponzi? Cheesy

A Ponzi scheme is an investment scam designed to provide significant returns to earlier investors using the capital contributed by newer investors rather than generating any real profits in Bitcoin, it is true that early investors who hold onto their assets may enjoy huge returns these returns are not derived from the investments of newer participants but rather from the increase in the price of Bitcoin over time. This price surge has resulted from various factors driving demand for +16 years. It is also worth noting that not all wealthy Bitcoin holders are early participants in fact many of the current top holders are exchanges, institutions, and companies that have entered the market in the last decade.

Satoshi mined in early days approximately 22,000 blocks, each rewarding him with 50 BTC while no one can confirm or deny whether Satoshi has continued to mine Bitcoin until today, that initial mining allowed him to acquire around 1.1 million BTC, which is roughly 5.24% of the max supply. He has largely left those coins untouched with the exception of some address's like:1CGT3Ywaa2upJfWtUtbXonDPNTfZPWqzmA < that i assume it have been hacked somehow as someone like him wouldn't make this mistake while a lot of eyes are watching his wallets> This raises the question: is this the behavior of someone operating a Ponzi scheme? Holding onto such a realy huge wealth estimated at over $98 billion at the current Bitcoin price would place him at number 18 on the Forbes billionaires list<if he is still alive>

Its interesting that people often criticize Satoshi for the coins he mined which I believe he did this to test the stability of mining even if he kept it as a reward for his invention which is one of the truly great innovations in human history. Meanwhile, it is common for teams and devs in other cryptocurrency projects to take around 5-10% of the printed total supply and extra +5% often under various designations such as <labs, community fund, charitable initiatives,.. etc>. In many cases they eventually dump these coins back into the market, yet they escape scrutiny while Satoshi is labeled as a Ponzi schemer or questioned about his motives for holding such wealth

Quote from: Rasa nanas on January 30, 2025, 09:21:28 AM

Currently, Michael Saylor, a large holder of Bitcoin, is still accumulating Bitcoin and according to his estimate, there is a high possibility of Bitcoin reaching 1 million by 2050. Bitcoin predictions are such that even if they seem unrealistic at first, they later turn into reality.

As mentioned Michael Saylor, his company MicroStrategy announced its intention to explore purchasing Bitcoin back in 2020. This shows that they are not early participants, yet MicroStrategy has become the world's largest corporate holder of Bitcoin.