Bitcoin ponzi scheme? Simple questions to crypto fans.
Let's assume that there were 1M guys who bought Bitcoin at Coinbase at $1K/BTC. This makes the amount of 1B USD sitting at Coinbase. Now the price is $3K/BTC. What will happen if only the half of this 1M people come to Coinbase and try exchange their BTC back to fiat currency? Where Coinbase will find the missing 500M? What if the price goes to $10K/BTC?
Isn't it the biggest ponzi scheme ever? Only the first ones (the insiders, the biggest sharks, the "core developers" etc) will be able to exchange their cryptocurrency to fiat money and all the rest will simple lose everything...
Do some research into how it actually works.
How works the bitcoin exchange or what? Because I'm not talking about blockchain, segwit, hard forks or whatever like this.. Just a simple question: in the above example, where from the exchange will get dollars to pay you for your bitcoins? Can you answer this please?
Again, do so research.
Again, if you can answer this simple question - please answer.
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Hahahaha you shouldn't post things on here you obviously don't know anything about
Great, so if you know, please answer the question. :)
For 1 they are just doing the next round of fund raising with a 1 billion valuation and will be raising around 100 million. 2 they take pretty hefty fees for buying and selling coins. 3 they are linked to exchanges. 4 they have there own reserves of cash and bitcoin what will be rising in price aswell so I don't think they are short of cash lol. This is a quote from coinbase "We integrate with a variety of exchanges and also hold our own reserves. When you sell your bitcoins for USD we usually sell them to other Coinbase users at some point down the line (this is where our reserves come from), but we may cash them out if needed. In general, our goal is to abstract away some of the complexity so it's a simpler process for our users. What we have now is a good start but not finished by any means. Hope it help". So please don't post false information on here about things you know nothing about and do some research first....
Thanks. Maybe my question was not clear enough, I've used Coinbase just as an example, don't get me wrong, I don't have nothing against them, even the opposite... I'm questioning the crypto model and the valuation of the tokens, the problem that there is no equity behind to justify their value. :) Of course, the obv point is that it is a free market and the price is determined by the supply and demand. But exactly this is also where the problem is IMO...
So to rephrase my question... As said, the current price of the BTC is purely speculative (no equity behind). If it was the opposite, there should be no reason for anyone in the world to invest in anything else (neither to try to start a business, nor to go to work, nothing...) than cryptos. Because the growth is that big and easy, everyone is potentially able to increase their wealth significantly in just few months. Now I hope you will agree that nothing in the world comes from nothing, so this is what my question is about...
The only things the cryptos have at the moment is Trust, Hope, Plans.. :) It's similar to a gov debt - you can buy it for 1 USD and to hope that it will become 10 USD so you can profit. But as its a gov debt, there is the economics of the country behind that can produce value, there is FED that can print dollars if there are no enough to pay you when you come back to them to ask for your 10 USD per each paper they've sold to you before.... And with cryptos you dont have any of those...
Cheers
I think you should watch the video I posted in the reply
I did. The value of the cryptos is still too vague.
Actually this is an article in cointelegraph from yesterday https://cointelegraph.com/explained/how-cryptocurrencies-maintain-their-price-explained that touches some of the points I think are extremely important..
"The price of a cryptocurrency is a reflection of its value. The more useful it is, the higher the demand for it will be. That demand is what drives the price of any one coin up.
However, internal factors are not the only ones affecting the price. Speculative pressure, exerted by traders who buy cryptocurrencies only to sell them later, is an external factor which may affect the price of a coin regardless of its actual usefulness."
So I think this is exactly where we are at the moment... And we see all methods mentioned there to keep the value up. But what is inevitable is that the speculators (those 0.5M from the example in my op) will come soon to ask to exchange their cryptos to fiat (to pay bills, to buy cars, to go to Maldives..) and then simply the end will come.. and then we will see the fair prices - 10 dollar for ETH, 100 dollar for BTC (even less).
Cheers
Watch this
Simple answer: for every buyer there is a seller.
Or do you think Coinbase let's users buy and sell without coughing up the BTC/$$ for each trade?
"for every buyer there is a seller" - exactly, this is how it should be. But is it so? You see above what headlypark copied from their website:
"When you sell your bitcoins for USD we usually sell them to other Coinbase users at some point down the line (this is where our reserves come from), but we may cash them out if needed. In general, our goal is to abstract away some of the complexity so it's a simpler process for our users."
So this is what I'm saying.. When (if) the panic sell is about to start, the first ones will be able to sell their tokens - no matter who will pay for them, be it the exchange using their fund reserve or some buyers who still don't know what's comming. Eventually the price will drop significantly as everyone wants to sell. And as there is no equity behind the token, the price can literally go to 0....