Look.
Imagine an otherwise empty room with a table and a few chairs. A couple people come in with some money in their pockets and cards. They play a few round of a card game, some lose, some win. When they leave, the room as it was before so it is crystal clear the sum of their money couldn't change. Some won, some lost but overall the change is zero. This still doesn't change if, for convenience, during the game, they use plastic chips to count wins and losses and at the end they exchange it for money.
But if someone takes a small cut every time the plastic chips move then that person is guaranteed to win and everyone else together is guaranteed to lose. Now, a game where, without knowing anything about the game you can tell ahead of the time which group wins and which one loses is not a game, it's a scam.
Indeed, one of the best moves for players is not to play the game but to sell their chips -- and praise the game to increase the chance of a greater fool buying in. Those will sit on a greater loss than you did which might not materialize yet but it's certainly in the system.
So, any crypto"currency" with transaction fees is a scam. Those who collect transaction fees are guaranteed to win and the rest are guaranteed to lose.
And no, stocks aren't like this because they produce dividend. And no, gold is not like this either because there are uses of gold which transform your gold into higher value products than raw gold (integrated circuits, jewelry) which sell for real money. Neither can happen with crypto"currencies", there the only interfacing with real money is exchange.
Does this not describe CC fees/taxes/online marketplaces/etc? Or is your argument all those are scams as well?
I agree crypto projects are generally a scam but I fully disagree the reason for that is transaction fees (which I assume is what you're alluding to here as the "small cut").
No, because CCs exchange dollars and the dollars themselves are not worthless (or, rather are given worth via a nuclear arsenal).
The coins themselves are worthless, but accrue "fees" in fiat (ex. when you exchange USD for UST).
> The coins themselves are worthless, but accrue "fees" in fiat (ex. when you exchange USD for UST).
But why are the coins worthless? I'm sure your answer would be "because they're a scam" (probably more indirectly, but it would boil down to that point). But your reasoning for why the coins are a scam involves them being worthless.
Also, this isn't even true but the standard definition of worth of something like "what the market is willing to pay for something".
The coins are worthless because they have no function outside of speculation.
>But your reasoning for why the coins are a scam involves them being worthless.
The coins are a scam because they are worthless but the conmen in the room are telling you that if you just hodl they will be worth a billion dollars. Just like buying seeds for a money tree is a scam. In other words, the coins themselves have as much utility as seeds for a money tree. Sure the market might be willing to pay for seeds for a money tree; but you and I both know that money trees don't exist and the market participants are paying for something that will be worthless in 10 years.
You are now one of those market participants twisting language because you are 100% convinced that you will begin harvesting benjamins in 10 years once you plant your money tree seeds. Once the tree matures and bears no fruit, will money seeds be a scam, or will it just be that your tree was a "Failed project", but the ecosystem of money tree seeds is 100% legitimate?