I agree with you that those kind of schemes are Risky and definitely un-ethical (though some claims to be based on pure trading)... But how could you treat Bitcoin different? Bitcoin also depends upon continuous money coming purring in.. to raise its value and demand.... Moreover un-necessary energy is used to generate a bitcoin that has NO real worth behind..
Do you know the basics of cryptography? You never needed bitcoin to design the way it has been designed... (Etherium and NEO may have better models and features). If you think deep, then, you will not see a big difference between Bitcoin and the schemes that you are pointing too.. Those schemes are also the reason to raise huge demands of bitcoins...
...And another thing, please also investigate the working models of Steemit echo system and Bitshares echo system. It will help us to understand better. Do you find some differences and similarities? How they work? Why they work the way they work? How they differ from others?
Bitcoin doesn't and has never promised the users of their product or advertised their project as a vehicle of guaranteed profit. Bitcoin can go up and down and the ecosystem won't collapse. The 2014-15 decline of Bitcoin would have destroyed schemes like these as money was leaving the ecosystem. Money left Bitcoin for over a year, yet Bitcoin survived because of no promise of profit. Bitcoin is simply an asset like gold. It's value is determined entirely by the market, but does not rely on money coming into the asset. Bitcoin would still exist if each Bitcoin cost a penny. You can also sell your Bitcoin whenever you feel like it, these schemes usually require you to lock up your assets for some period of time.
A pyramid scheme requires constant cash flow to pay those at the top of the pyramid. If these schemes existed in 2014, they would have all fallen apart or exited because they couldn't give money out as money was leaving the space. That being said, one could argue that Bitcoin is in somewhat of speculative bubble and may be due for a significant correction, but I am quite confident that when that does happen, these schemes won't be able to survive the bear market as money will quickly exit the space and all those at the bottom of the pyramid will be left holding the bag.
Bitcoin is nothing more than a cryptographic based process to share value (or convey data) between two (or multiple) un-trusted parties where majority has the power to decide about the integrity (correctness) of the data.
i agree that bitcoin also have some risk
@louisthomas Hello, I just wonder what are your views on STEEM Power up and Power down? I am not 100% sure but it is probably 13 weeks lockup time (step-by-step Power Down). Did you try/use it?
I'd like a video about the depths of Steemit, how it works really... =)