Ponzi scheme: A fraudulent investment operation where the operator, an individual or organization, pays returns to its investors from new capital paid to the operators by new investors, rather than from profit earned by the operator. Many of the under-informed, the under-educated, and the under-control masses have lobbed this parting shot at Bitcoin over the years.
People tend to fear things that they don’t understand, and will hide behind that fear with blind attacks that sound right, but are just as ignorant, if not more so. Bitcoin clearly does not fall into the definition of a “Ponzi scheme” at all, and this has been double-checked by what many have called the world’s largest “Ponzi scheme,” The World Bank.
Also read: Pirate@40 Arrested for Bitcoin Ponzi Scam
World Bank: Experts in the “Ponzi Scheme”
Kaushik Basu has just completed a “working research paper” for the World Bank, and while mainly going over the history of said scheme from its origins. Basu, in so doing, felt the need to shine a fairly positive light on Bitcoin, and illuminate how it doesn’t fit this paradigm.
“One of the most recent cases of bubbles occurred in the new ‘Bitcoin’ experiment. Bitcoin is a crypto currency, the main and original attraction of which is the low transactions cost associated with its use. One can buy Bitcoin the way one can buy euros and trade freely with others having euros. Trouble started when people began speculating that the value of Bitcoin would rise, thereby raising the demand for Bitcoin and making the value-rise a self-fulfilling prophesy. In other words, what we witnessed recently in the Bitcoin phenomenon fits the standard definition of a speculative bubble.” states Kaushik Basu in his research paper commissioned by The World Bank. “Contrary to a widely-held opinion, Bitcoin is not a deliberate Ponzi. And there is little to learn by treating it as such. The main value of Bitcoin may, in retrospect, turn out to be the lessons it offers to central banks on the prospects of electronic currency, and on how to enhance efficiency and cut transactions cost.”
A far better question than “What is Bitcoin?,” that fewer common people have asked than should, is “What is The World Bank?” Bitcoin is a revolutionary digital protocol that supports an online currency of finite units whose value is based solely on market demand. This digital currency’s current market capitalization value is just over $5 Billion as of this writing. “The World Bank” is, according to Wikipedia, “A United Nations international financial institution that provides loans to developing nations for ‘capital programs.’ The World Bank’s official goal is the reduction of poverty.” Really? How’s that working out so far, after seventy years in business?
Created at the famous (or infamous, depending on who you are talking to) Bretton Woods Conference in 1944, the World Bank was founded, along with the equally clandestine IMF (International Monetary Fund), by the U.S. and the United Kingdom. Since both the US and the World Bank are governed from their headquarters in Washington D.C., I don’t need to speculate too much upon who controls these international mega-banks.
I could give you the chapter-and-verse of what is accepted online as factual information about their history and mission statement, but I’d rather educated you via video. Karen Hudes was General Council at the World Bank for over a decade, and no one would know the inner workings better than her. She has her own version of a research paper, a real-world personal account of one of the world’s most secretive and powerful financial entities. It is far more interesting and in-depth than what Kaushik Basu provided above.
(As a point of personal disclosure, I was a banker on Wall Street for many years, and I also had access to information that I could not associate myself with. Similar to Ms. Hudes, but certainly not on that scale. Issues like these are why I no longer work on Wall Street. There are a lot of things that aren’t in the brochure. I just didn’t have the ethics, or lack thereof, needed to be a serious player in that part of the world. I’m proud to say I didn’t have what it takes to be a modern day “Robber Baron”!) Not only are most major modern commercial banks “ponzi schemes” by definition, they fundamentally destroy national and global economies by their monetary practices and habitual corruption. The larger the banks, the greater the scheme, and the more secretive the players, and the rules.
At your local bank, if you take out a loan, the underwriting can include many “weasel clauses” designed to send you into foreclosure. Triggers that can send borrowers into an adjustable arm, a double-digit interest rate, or even a new payment structure the buyer is never supposed to know about, creating instant long-term financial and credit poverty for the indebted, and instant wealth transfer for the debtor. The housing crisis from 2008-2009 was built around sub-prime lending and under-handed underwriting practices that have enslaved millions throughout the United States. No one goes to jail; the fines are less than the profits received, and the rules of engagement are adjusted by the players themselves. The average citizen is none the wiser. Everything goes on, except for the right to equity in a home for those duped by a rigged system. They are locked out of home ownership, and the security that it provides, forever. And this is just what they have planned for the little guy. Ms Hudes can enlighten you on how similar practices are taken against soverign nations in need of a loan.
The day any Western-run bank “reduces poverty” is the day I eat my hat. Through such monetary hustles like fractional reserve banking, futures & high-frequency trading, legalized and blatantly illegal money laundering, and derivatives trading that currently runs into the quadrillions worldwide, The World Bank can be called a “ponzi scheme”, but that would be an insult to such small-time scams. The World Bank represents something far more evil and insidious. They, along with the IMF, have caused more poverty than any other entities in the history of mankind. Wars leave ruins that can be repaired in a couple of years. These vultures have attacked nations with the intent of destroying them for generations.
If you are looking to point a finger at any financial instrument, don’t do it towards Bitcoin. Outside of Mark Karpeles and Mt. Gox and other centralized Bitcoin scams, Bitcoin has never hurt anyone. The seventy-year history of The World Bank has more skeletons in its closet than the world’s greatest wars combined. It is an international mafia designed to prey upon this world through monetary policy and corruption. It behooves you to do more research on The World Bank and the IMF. Many countries economies are on the brink of collapse or are recovering from one. And these two monsters have their fingerprints all over many of them.
They do all of their financial dealing in the shadows for a reason. Cancers tend to destroy living things from the inside out.
Your views on people who label Bitcoin a “ponzi scheme”. What has “The World Bank” done for decades, while “reducing poverty” worldwide, in a world growing poorer by the minute? Share above and comment below.