Oh Dave Portnoy, what happened? You went from being a major bitcoin advocate and now you seem to hate it. What made you change your mind so drastically?
Dave Portnoy Switches on Bitcoin
As we all remember, it was a big deal in August of this year when the Winklevoss Twins of the Gemini Exchange in New York decided to explain bitcoin to Portnoy after he admitted to having no idea what it was or how it worked on his podcast. After a few hours with the Twins, it was estimated that gold would eventually run out of value thanks to Elon Musk’s plans to mine asteroids and that BTC would likely live on for quite a while.
When it was all over, Portnoy gratefully announced that he was going to take the first step towards investing in bitcoin. Sadly, it doesn’t look like that step is going to be taken after all considering he’s now referring to bitcoin as a Ponzi scheme – something that should be avoided at all costs. It’s a real shame too, considering the price of the asset has now shot up by roughly $400 over the past 48 hours to reach $10,700, the highest it’s been in a little over a week.
In a recent interview, Portnoy explained the following about the world’s number one digital currency by market cap:
It’s just one big Ponzi scheme. You get in and you just need to not be the one left holding the bag. It’s no different from the stock market. Everyone’s pumping their own [coin] alright.
Several people within the crypto community are not taking well to Portnoy’s words and are criticizing him on social media. Jameson Lopp – co-founder and chief technology officer at bitcoin security firm Casa in Colorado – stated on his Twitter page:
Oh, dear Dave. By that definition, every publicly traded asset is a Ponzi.
The Analysts Fight Back
Other analysts, such as Willy Woo, were quick to disagree with Portnoy’s statements, but also explained why they felt someone like Portnoy – who’s relatively new to the crypto space – would hold such ideas when it comes to the lack of protections in the bitcoin world. He stated:
Structurally, people call things Ponzi schemes when it looks like a bubble and with no real productivity shown. Early stage startups with ever increasing valuations fall into this camp. The thing is, it looks like a Ponzi scheme until it takes over as the new normal and changes the world.
It’s also not entirely fair to label bitcoin as an asset that has shown no productivity considering it is up just under 50 percent since the beginning of the year. Despite all the anger towards BTC, Portnoy hinted that he would eventually return to it considering the people in the BTC space were “his kind of people.”