this post was submitted on 11 Mar 2025
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Never is it a good time to invest in a ponzi scheme. It's just a matter of playing "Greatest Fool".
"Greatest fool" description relies on the precept of its utility or demand returning to zero in a near-future timeframe. If people have utility for "the thing", that won't be the case.
There is no utility really, for ponzicoins. You can't make anything from it. You can use it to make anything. You can't eat it. You can't hydrate with it. And you can't use the notes to summon military aid.
I suppose you can buy drugs with it. Maybe.
So yes, it's a Greatest Fool game.
Yes, for the limited subset of ERC20s or whatever you describe as "ponzicoins". Things that actually do nothing, particular not doing anything more than L1 cryptos but "this is yet another token", are not really adding any value. But I would be really surprised if you can name any more complex contracts than ERC20s (or ERC721s), which is where the work in the space actually goes.
"Work"
Yes, work. Smart contracts are designed, programmed and, if they're done right, rigorously audited for correctness. Then you have user-facing interface and everything surrounding that as well. Look at the documentation of AAVE, for one example.
And this isn't even getting into the protocol level (L1 or L2) work either. Bitcoin was relatively simple, Ethereum is not. They've spent years crafting these systems to function for PoS, L2 support, sharding, rollups, etc., at scale.
What do these "smart contracts" make? And why do we need to burn up tons of fossil fuels, just to have contracts like we had before?
And how is this better than a typical contract?
https://www.zdnet.com/article/hackers-hijack-smart-contracts-in-new-cryptocurrency-token-rug-pull-scams/
Both are simple ponzi schemes.
And all that time, they are still ponzi schemes that do none of the above very well. We've had all of that in the merchant payment systems for decades now, all without the need to consume more electricity than many small nations, just to approve a transaction.