"Bitcoin is the greatest scam in history ..."

[PaddyBloggit]

... according to Bill Harris, former CEO of Intuit and founding CEO of PayPal and Personal Capital:

"I’m tired of saying, “Be careful, it’s speculative.” Then, “Be careful, it’s gambling.” Then, “Be careful, it’s a bubble.” Okay, I’ll say it: Bitcoin is a scam.

In my opinion, it’s a colossal pump-and-dump scheme, the likes of which the world has never seen. In a pump-and-dump game, promoters “pump” up the price of a security creating a speculative frenzy, then “dump” some of their holdings at artificially high prices. And some cryptocurrencies are pure frauds. Ernst & Young estimates that 10 percent of the money raised for initial coin offerings has been stolen.

The losers are ill-informed buyers caught up in the spiral of greed. The result is a massive transfer of wealth from ordinary families to internet promoters. And “massive” is a massive understatement — 1,500 different cryptocurrencies now register over $300 billion of “value.”

It helps to understand that a bitcoin has no value at all."

Article here.

 

[Brendan Burgess]

Hi Paddy

Although Bitcoin has a lot of attributes of a scam, there really is no evidence at all that Bitcoin was conceived as a scam. I don't know one way or the other. But I have not seen any evidence.

Some of the other ICOs are pure scams. But then again, if I show you a bag of hot air and tell you that it's a bag of hot air, but other bags of hot air are selling for $20,000 each, and you pay me $100 for my bag of hot air, is that a scam? If I sell you a gold bar for $1,000 and in reality it does not exist, or else it's gilded base metal, that is a scam.

The rest of the article is very good.

Brendan

 

[TheBigShort]

In my opinion, it’s a colossal pump-and-dump scheme, the likes of which the world has never seen. In a pump-and-dump game, promoters “pump” up the price of a security creating a speculative frenzy, then “dump” some of their holdings at artificially high prices.

Are those securities subjected to pump and dump schemes fraudulent too?

 

[PaddyBloggit]

Are those securities subjected to pump and dump schemes fraudulent too?

I don't know. You'd have to ask Bill Harris. Twas he who said it.

 

[Negotiator]

Yet another person coming from the (semi) traditional payments sector calling Bitcoin a fraud/scam/useless etc......nothing new really. I wish these same individuals would at least voice their opinions on Blockchain technology and other cryptos when they come out with articles like this. The criminal use argument is now outdated too as they now anonymous cryptos such as Monero or Verge for transactions, Bitcoin is relatively easy to chase for the authorities.

Calling it a scam is just silly in my opinion, whatever about the value argument!