Bitcoin schlimmer als ein Ponzi-Schema?
Im vergangenen Jahr habe ich einige Beiträge zum Thema der Kryptowährungen auf bto gebracht. Dabei habe ich am Beispiel des Economist gezeigt, wie sich die Haltung geändert hat. Von einer großen Skepsis bis hin zur Definition als Revolution. Ich habe aber auch gesagt, dass die Tatsache, dass ich es in meinem Podcast bespreche ein Zeichen sein könnte, dass wir am Höhepunkt angekommen sind. In der Tat war der Einbruch dramatisch.
Dafür und für meinen Podcast zum Thema habe ich aus der Kryptogemeinschaft viel Lob bekommen. Das dürfte heute nicht der Fall sein, hat doch die FINANCIAL TIMES einen Gastbeitrag veröffentlicht mit dem Titel: „Why bitcoin is worse than a Madoff-style Ponzi scheme“.
Lesen wir mal rein:
- „(…) guests on financial TV news continue to tout (bitcoin) as the best-performing asset of the last N years, where N can be just about any number from one to ten. They also increasingly judge it as a credible investment in its own right.“ – bto: Das machen auch seriöse Investmentmanager. Es ist längst im Mainstream angekommen.
- „This contradicts the longstanding sceptical view by many economists and others that what bitcoin really is, in effect, is a Ponzi scheme. Brazilian computer scientist Jorge Stolfi is one voice who has contended this. His view is based on the following observations:
- Investors buy in the expectation of profits.
- That expectation is sustained by the profits of those that cash out.
- But there is no external source for those profits; they come entirely from new investments.
- And the operators take away a large portion of the money.
All of this rings true true.“ – bto: Das ist sicherlich eine korrekte Beschreibung. Das Ganze System basiert auf einem künftigen Käufer.
- „But in calling bitcoin a Ponzi scheme, critics are arguably being too kind on two counts. First, bitcoin doesn’t have the same endgame as a Ponzi scheme. Second, it constitutes a deeply negative sum game from a broad social perspective.“ – bto: Vor allem den Punkt mit dem Endgame finde ich interessant.
- „In the largest and probably the longest running Ponzi scheme in history, Bernie Madoff paid returns of around one per cent a month. (…) the Great Financial Crisis of 2008 led to a cascade of redemptions by participants and the scheme’s collapse. But the resolution of Madoff’s scheme has extended beyond its collapse on account of the remarkable and ongoing legal proceedings. (…) Many are unaware that a bankruptcy trustee, Irving H. Picard, has doggedly and successfully pursued those who took more money out of the scheme than they put in. (…) Of the $20bn in recognised original investments in the scheme, some $14bn, a striking 70 per cent, has been recovered and distributed.“ – bto: Will heißen, es gibt bei Ponzi-Schemen nicht unbedingt einen Totalverlust, sondern eine gute Chance, einen Teil des Geldes zurückzubekommen.
- „By contrast to investments with Madoff, Bitcoin is bought not as an income-earning asset but rather as a zero-coupon perpetual. In other words, it promises nothing as a running yield and never matures with a required terminal payment. It follows that it cannot suffer a run. The only way a holder of bitcoin can cash out is by a sale to someone else.“ – bto: Damit gibt es auch keinen echten Wert, in den man verstrecken könnte.
- „Bitcoin’s collapse would look very different to that of Ponzi’s or Madoff’s scheme. (…) In this event, there would be no long-running legal effort to chase down those who cashed in their bitcoin early in order to redistribute their profits to those left holding bitcoins. Holders of bitcoin would have no claim on those who bought early and sold.“ – bto: Es ist dann eher wie mit Tulpen-Zwiebeln… wobei auch da etwas Fundamentales da war…
- „In its cashflow, bitcoin resembles a penny-stock pump-and-dump scheme more than a Ponzi scheme. In a pump-and-dump scheme, traders acquire basically worthless stock, talk it up and perhaps trade it among themselves at rising prices before unloading it on to those drawn in by the chatter and the price action. Like the pump-and-dump scheme, bitcoin taps into the pure desire for capital gains. Buyers cannot stand the sight of friends getting rich overnight: they suffer an acute fear of missing out (FOMO).“ – bto: Wer kennt dieses Gefühl angesichts der enormen Gewinne nicht?
- „On the second count, another big difference between bitcoin and a Ponzi scheme is that the former is, from an aggregate or social standpoint, a negative sum game. (…) the game is to name the country whose electricity consumption equals that of all the puzzle-solvers (miners) who get to effect transactions and receive bitcoin in reward. Even if the electricity were priced to include its contribution to global warming (its ‚environmental externality‘)—which presumably it mostly is not—this represents a real cost.“ – bto: Wobei wir gelernt haben, dass es sich auch um grünen Strom handeln kann, für den es keine Abnehmer gibt und es deshalb nicht diesen negativen sozialen Wert hat.
- „To conclude, an economic analysis of bitcoin must recognise its uniqueness in the history of manias. As an object of speculation, bitcoin is unprecedented in the degree to which there is no there there. This post-modern mania features big prices for entries on nobody’s spreadsheet. A zero-coupon perpetual has arrived not as a joke but as a trillion dollar asset.“ – bto: In der Tat ist der Vergleich mit einer ewigen Nullzinsanleihe nicht schlecht.
- „In a crash, the holders of bitcoin will collectively have lost what they have paid the miners for their bitcoin. (…) But bitcoin holders will have no one to pursue to recover this sum: it will simply have gone up in smoke, a social loss. The holders of bitcoin would then only wish it had been a Ponzi scheme.“ – bto: Vielleicht ist es ja alles kein Problem, weil es eben einen Wert bekommt, allein aufgrund der Tatsache, dass es ein knappes Gut ist? So zumindest muss man denken, wenn man in Bitcoin und Co. eine sinnvolle Geldanlage sieht. Oder?
