When most people buy a cryptoasset like Bitcoin, do you think they are buying it to make an online transaction or buying it in the hopes of reselling it for more than they paid? Most likely they are buying it in the hopes of reselling it to future crypto investors who are late on the game. Nobody wants to be the first to sell and nobody wants to be the last to buy—this is what prevents the price of Bitcoin, altcoins, and shitcoins from immediately collapsing. Just because Bitcoin is decentralized, doesn’t mean it does not behave like a Ponzi.

What do you think would happen to the price of Bitcoin if it was banned in a major country? Excluding its negative environmental impact, the biggest problem with Bitcoin is that, if sufficiently banned by enough countries, it would lose most of its value. It is very possible that governments will ban crypto because they see it as competing with their own national Ponzi assets like the American stock market or the Canadian housing market. The primary purpose of currency in capitalist societies is the continued function of Ponzi markets, and a large part of Western economies are not built around producing things of value but pumping their own stock and housing markets.

Like Bitcoin, the ANTI-Ponzism token can lose value if crypto markets are banned; however, the ANTI smart contract will exist far into the future. The same regulatory risks associated with Bitcoin are also associated with the ANTI token; yet, because the ANTI token is built on Ethereum, environmental impacts are reduced. How do you think Bitcoin became successful despite its technical inefficiencies? Bitcoin became successful because it developed a ‘cult following’ which told everyone else to buy Bitcoin. Bitcoin utilizes MLM, and to succeed in disrupting the current zeitgeist, we must operate in a similar way to the Bitcoin community.

When private collectors purchase a work of art for millions of dollars, they probably aren't buying it for sentimental value or because they appreciate the piece more than you. They are buying it in the hopes of someone else coming along and purchasing it for even more money. This Ponziesque behavior is only possible because the fine art market is largely rigged and runs like a massive price fixing scheme that exists to pump the value of a few collections. Expensive art is only expensive because a small group of insiders decided that it should be expensive—the same is likely true of NFTs (crypto art).

Most collectibles are either short term fads or depend upon a certain age demographic or industry—in other words they have a shelf life. Art and collectibles are probably the least harmful Ponzi scheme with the exception of them being used to sometimes launder money. Nobody needs to buy art or collectibles and the proceeds are not used to influence politics in favor of the super-rich.

When most people buy an ounce of gold (or silver), do you think they are hoping to make a profit from the gold’s industrial or artistic applications? Most likely they are hoping to make a profit from selling their gold at a higher price to more fearful investors in the future. Gold that is used may be considered a productive asset but gold that is hoarded is not productive. Only a small proportion of gold and silver’s price comes from its productive or artistic use. In this way, precious (and rare earth) metal investors are passing on a Ponzi premium to anyone using metal productively or artistically. Gold was used for artistic purposes millennia before it started being used as a ‘store of value’ in currency.

Ultimately, the problem with precious metals (a problem that does not exist with many cryptos) is that more is constantly being dug from the ground, which dilutes your share of the metal Ponzi. The higher the price of gold, the more profitable it is to mine and the more it will be mined. When goldbugs tell you that gold is a store of value, what they are really saying is that they hope people in the future are willing to pay equal or greater value for their rock collection. Raw land is a better store of value than gold or silver because it is finite, needed, and often government supported. Protip: Bill Gates stores his wealth in farmland, not in gold.

Why would most people buy a non-dividend paying stock? Average people aren’t buying these things for voting rights and they probably aren’t holding in the hopes of one day receiving dividends. When most stock investors buy a non-dividend paying stock, they are not hoping to one day receive some of the company's profits in the form of dividends; but rather, they hope to sell it at a higher price to future stock investors. Publicly traded companies are productive assets as a whole, but a stock is not a productive asset if it fails to give you dividends or useful voting rights since the benefits you receive do not come from the company itself. Check out ‘The Ponzi Factor’ to learn more about the stock Ponzi, stock buybacks, non-dividend stocks, and more.

Investing in the stock market also enriches billionaires. The paper wealth of billionaires is largely inflated by people buying stocks (which are often overpriced compared to earnings) because a majority of stock supply is ‘HODLed’ by billionaire 'whales' while the remaining supply is bid up by retail investors. If society did not invest so much money in Ponzi schemes owned by billionaires, then those billionaires would not be so rich and would not have so much influence. It is people bidding up Ponzi stocks owned by the wealthiest that greatly contributes to wealth inequality. Quantitative easing and low interest rates (as determined by central banks) are massive motivators for people bidding up the price of Ponzi stocks.

Just because a nation's stock market has increased in value so far does not mean it will continue to do so in the future. Take a look at the Italian and Japanese stock markets. As of 2021, both the Italian and Japanese stock markets have failed to recover their previous highs. The Italian market peaked in 2000 while the Japanese market peaked in 1989. After the crash of 1929, the American stock market didn’t recover until 1959 in inflation-adjusted dollars, and many of the companies that were there in 1929 were not there in 1959. Contrary to the wisdom of financial gurus, it is not true that a random basket of stocks always grows.

Decades ago, you could buy a modest house for just a few years’ worth of wages or a storefront for just a few years' worth of earnings. Now it would take quadruple that and getting worse. Ask yourself, what changed? Just as gold has historically been used as a store of value, real estate is increasingly being used to store wealth. Often, valuable and potentially productive plots of land will sit empty and idle for decades because the owners of said land are just holding it as part of their portfolio. Blocks of condos and houses will sit empty so that the owners can diversify their portfolio, while the people next door live like sardines, or struggle to pay the mortgage (or rent). Property investors make buyers pay a Ponzi premium on property and this makes your average homeowner view their home as an investment rather than a place they live. And before you know it, the average voting homeowner is against the construction of new developments because this would increase the housing supply, dilute the local market, and devalue their home. Housing should be considered a human right and not an investment vehicle for the asset management industry.

The problem with this Ponzi is that most real estate is purchased on borrowed money, and as a result, the price of housing is directly related to the availability of cheap credit. Most Ponzi schemes aren’t bought into with borrowed money—real estate is. As we saw in 2008, speculative real estate bubbles create credit crises that poison the larger productive economy for years to come. Just as gold ‘HODLers’ make you pay a premium for useful gold, property HODLers (speculators) make you pay a premium for property. The only difference is that you need a home to live in and food produced on a farm to eat. Of all the Ponzis in the world, the property Ponzi is the least benign. For the property speculator, housing insecurity, homelessness, and social dysfunction are necessary by-products of their Ponzi. This is why the property Ponzi is the most damaging Ponzi.

As labor’s share of the Ponzi economy continues to shrink, it will only become more difficult for working people to afford housing as more property will be used as an investment vehicle. How can we expect market-influenced governments to do anything about housing affordability? It is unlikely that affordable housing policies will be passed because most lawmakers & voters own homes and are themselves part of the property Ponzi. If you lack the ability to enter into the urban property Ponzi, it would be wise to buy as far away from cities as possible because cities are where most Ponzi markets emanate from. Indeed, the most extreme elements of Ponzi-style economics operate out of large cities.