Stocks are not Ponzi wtf? Even today you can get something like Apple making 3% per year while also having big chance of making more in the future. It has nothing to do with a Ponzi scheme at all while artificially propped up producing absolutely nothing crypto currencies have a lot of similarities.
The argument that scarcity is a fundamental value proposition for an asset is just nonsense. I can make my own crypto even more limited than BTC overnight and it will worth about 0. It's not scarcity that makes stuff valuable. In case of BTC 3 things make it valuable: adoption, ability to make transaction while skipping over regulations (which requires adoption) and artificial propping by scams like Tether.
Stocks are a ponzi by definition.
All growth in stock prices are dependent on extracting money from future investors. It gets a little more complex with corporate stock buybacks, but ignoring this, the price of a stock tracks a companies success, but is ultimately a product of the market buy/sells. Without injection of funds by the corporation, its a Ponzi like anything else. Even more so for stock that does not issue dividends.
Same goes for housing, or anything else with scarcity.
Wall street has done a great disservice making you believe the price of a stock accurately reflects the value added by the corporation.
I agree that adoption (network effect, Metcalfs Law), censorship resistance and other economic constructs like stablecoins all have an influence in value. Folks have been saying "I can make my own, scarcity is bunk" for a long time now. 10,000 other clones of bitcoin exist today that are worth nothin'. Maybe there is something about big b Bitcoin and the cryptoeconomic model that Satoshi chose.
The idea of a stock is that it is worth the present value of all future dividends. Stocks that do not issue dividends and are expected never to issue dividends are indeed a Ponzi. I think those are by far the minority of stocks.
The idea that stocks that never issue dividends are somehow only valuable because other people think they are valuable (let alone calling it a Ponzi) is completely misguided. I mean if a company builds a pile of cash and never distributes it to shareholders it's still very valuable to have a say about how that pile of cash should be spent. If a company ammased a billion of cash there will be many takers to buy it for less than a billion just so they can direct that billion somewhere.
Of course there is also an option of closing shop and dividing the assets to shareholders or myriad other ways of making the assets valuable without paying dividends.
Those kinds of basic misconceptions about financial markets is what crypto evangelist prey on. It sounds pretty convincing to the ignorant but is just nonsense under scrutiny.
Man, companies make money or have good prospects of making money in the future. You own part of the profits. If the company pays dividends doesn't matter at all. It's econ 101 or not even that.
The argument that scarcity is a fundamental value proposition for an asset is just nonsense. I can make my own crypto even more limited than BTC overnight and it will worth about 0. It's not scarcity that makes stuff valuable. In case of BTC 3 things make it valuable: adoption, ability to make transaction while skipping over regulations (which requires adoption) and artificial propping by scams like Tether.