No, it's bc this crypto-craze has a lot of "ponzi" to it. I know it's unpopular here, so we really dont' talk about it (this being an exception bc you're a reasonable human being) much, but if you really do the deep dive on bitcoin and it's inner-machinations, it's nearly a perfect Bernie-Madoff style ponzi scheme. It practically self-funds its own price rise.
but even if you don't believe that, crypto just isn't justifying the December $800 billion valuation, it would have to generate at LEAST $20 billion in profits for crypto-token owners to get even remotely close. Name a project that takes in cash, and spits out back out to token owners? Steemit could be net cashflow positive with ads, but other than that, it's mostly like bitcoin in that the wealth is created from people bidding up the steem price in a short period of time.
There's no fundamental backing to the steem price.
If steem price went down, all the reverse happens, readers would lose interest, writers wouldn't get paid significantly, and therefore traffic would dwindle, and this would create a whirlpool effect. We've been in the opposite for the last few years, as money coming into crypto speculatively has created higher prices, which brings in more money. It ends when there's more crypto-ideas than there is new money, prices sag, people lose interest. It's our guess December was the high, but we could be wrong by a year, maybe it'll be December 2018 and a $100 Steem price. If so, it probably just means the subsequent downside will be even greater.
Steem will one day have to live off of ads, it's the only way. Either that or subscriptions, and that's an even TOUGHER model. You'd have to trust the witnesses deal out those ad revenues too-- god only knows what they will decide. Steem isn't exactly a moral high ground area! Everyone is nice, sure, but that's bc of the downvoting and upvoting effect. Human nature, as we're all aware, is much worse than what goes on at Steemit. but that's what makes Steemit fun, for now (while price goes up or there's hope for it going up).
I get what your saying about "ponzi" -- the more people buying in, the higher the price and benefits for the early buyers. I'm guessing you used quotes, because (to my thinking) most cryptocurrencies, especially BTC, are not ponzis -- they make no promises of dividends (dividends that can only be financed by new participants).
But definitely, STEEM's price will definitely have a lot to do with people's interest.
bitcoin is actually what we think as almost the MOST ponzi-ish. We believe Szabo/Satoshi didn't INTEND it this way, but the way it's set up favors a rising price (difficulty-adjustment to mining, electricity costs, scarcity) price which self-funds the "ponzi". What Szabo, no matter how much history he digs up, won't ever be able to reproduce in older monies with bitcoin, is the fact that even the seashells and the gold and the Manhattan beads DID have functions other than money-- even if just beauty. In this respect, art (paintings) and gold aren't like bitcoin, which really IS nothing but air (electrons really). No one can see electrons. So bitcoin ONLY has trust, and that's the main ingredient to 100% of ponzi-schemes, whether "dividends" are paid or not.
Ponzi's don't really self-fund themselves tho, so bitcoin is unique in this respect. We refer to the mining, which pays a higher amount as the price goes up, and the price goes up bc it costs more to mine it. feedback loop which doesn't end until a certain size is reached where confidence in the currency required to keep it going up is much larger than society can provide. This is how all bubbles end, actually. It's why stuff like BCH splitting from BTC (so 42 mm tokens, a doubling) or new cryptos causes it's own problem bc it's more wieght for speculators to carry (and the reason for the $600bn crash from December highs to the bitcoin $5,9XX low in January).
I used quotes bc the definition of a ponzi scheme can be loose, and usually it involves INTENT to defraud. I don't think Satoshi meant to defraud, it's just going to end up that way.
lastly, we DO think there's a use case for crypto, it's just smaller than everyone thinks, and most caters to illegal and semi-legal operations such as Revolutionary Budgets, Assasinations, Concubines, Drugs (street and prescription but not via a doctor, aka Silk Road), Money Laundering, Gambling. what we call "dark". Notice how well Monero held up in the crypto-crash. That's bc eventually a crypto, if operated with integrity of bitcoin, might actually be rather useful someday to para-legal operations.
Also, non-trading transactions tend to stabilize the price, so don't go thinking that the higher use of Monero or PIVX or some dark coin for black markets will get you rich for owning it. The more legit transactions, the more likely the price of the crypto is to either stabilize (like the USD/Yen/Yuan/etc) or go down in value vs other commodity prices (like the USD/Yen/Yuan/etc...). Even Charles Lee, guy behind Litecoin, doesn't understand that usage = a sane LOW price, not a higher one. This concept is lost on literally EVERYONE participating in crypto, who thinks the complete opposite. Everyone in crypto THINKS that more transactions (we're talking like stores, buying THINGS, not trading) will equal a higher price, but that's bc 99.9% of people in crypto don't understand how currencies and currency-pairs work, despite being able to easily convert dollars/yen into bitcoin on Coinbase and then to Rubycoins via Bittrex. Those are trades, they help tokens go up bc the MAIN flow is from dollars to cryptos. Business transactions (like buying stuff on Overstock) helps SINK cryptos, bc those transactions ultimately end up as cryptos to dollars endpoints. That makes crypto prices go down, not up. Hate to say it, but while Charles Lee has probably a VERY high intelligence quotient, he's dumber than a box of rocks when it comes to machinations of currencies. Kinda like, doctors who think anti-depressants + troubled-youth doesn't equal school shootings. How can it? The SCIENCE! "Science" also makes nuclear weapons you know, and belches our innovative lead paint, leaded gasoline, and homosexual electro-shock-therapy. But we live in a world fascinated by the truly wonderful and obvious innovations of Sillycon Valley, and we then extrapolate those to EVERYTHING involving a one and a zero. The crypto-bros aren't the google founders or Evan Spiegel, they're a cancer on society. It's the greed that clouds Charles Lee's and Stan Larimer's judgement. They aren't stupid, they are just getting paid so handsomely, there's no incentive to actually TRULY understand what they built. Most creators are like this, so not blaming them. Our main point is, that just bc someone is an expert doesn't make them correct. And "they" aren't correct on how crypto ends. It will end badly, but with a few good things to come out of it. The best thing to come out of it all, will be the chink in centralized power's authority. Central Authority will likely end crypto, successfully, but the battle they're forced to fight and the embarrasment will put their egos in check, and that's a "check and balance" only the founding fathers of Ameriker could appreciate.
So we put "ponzi" in quotes, also bc no one wants to hear any of this, thinking you can post "fulltimegeek" pictures of yourself on the crapper and make $30 in 30 minutes is a way of life that's not best interupted by logic or sanity.
For all the other purposes, crypto has been around for decades and has already been mostly used where legal. (like USD banking, airline miles, etc...)
From the SEC:
The key part there is
from funds contributed by new investors.Sticking with just Bitcoin -- I think it's a misapplication of the word "ponzi" to apply it to Bitcoin. So we're in disagreement there. Nothing about Bitcoin is a Ponzi in the slightest.
Whether Bitcoin has value or not is another question, but it's unrelated to the notion of a Ponzi scheme. My opinion is that everything that does not have obvious utility (e.g. food, water, clothing, shelter...) is really just a belief masked as value. This is true for Bitcon, securities, gold, USD, or any other fiat. Belief is central and, in of itself, is not fraudulent. It's the main precursor to store of value.
In the end, if Bitcoin loses all its value, it will not be because of a Ponzi architecture. It will happen because there is no more belief in its store of value. The same goes for Facebook, Amazon, Google, Netflix stocks (which are overvalued).
Whether Bitcoin, cryptocurrencies, or blockchain deliver on the promises of many remains to be seen. I agree there is a lot of hype about this. However, I think it's too early to make predictions on success of failure. I personally think the impact is going to be huge, it's at least 20 years out, and it's going to happen in ways we can't guess right now. Just like the Internet.
I also think governments, in the end, will have a difficult time dealing with these technologies. I don't think all governments will act uniformly -- so participants (business, investors, etc...) will play the arbitrage game and move their wealth to where its wanted.