Boris Johnson, the former prime minister of the United Kingdom, called Bitcoin (BTC) a “Ponzi Scheme” that has less value than Pokémon cards, collectibles he said had a wide appeal and a multi-decade history.
Johnson wrote an opinion article published in the Daily Mail on Friday that began with a story about a friend who had given 500 British pounds, or about $661, to a man who promised to “double his money” by investing it in BTC.
The friend continued to pay additional “fees” to the scheme’s promoter over the next three and a half years, but was never able to retrieve his funds, despite sinking 20,000 British pounds, or about $26,474, which led to financial hardship, Johnson said.
“He was struggling to pay his bills. He wasn’t the only one, said my friend. Other people in the neighborhood were going through the same nightmare,” Johnson added. Johnson then argued that collectible Pokémon cards are a more tradable asset than BTC:
“These curious little Japanese cartoon beasties seem to exercise the same fascination over the five-year-old mind as they did 30 years ago. The kids drool over them. They boast and squabble about them.
Even if you remain pretty impervious to the charm of Pikachu, you can just about see why a decades-old Pikachu card is still a tradeable asset,” he added.
The opinion article drew a wave of online criticism from the Bitcoin community and crypto industry executives, who refuted it by explaining Bitcoin’s fundamental properties and arguing that debt-based fiat currency systems are Ponzi schemes.
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Bitcoiners educate and ridicule Johnson for his take
“Bitcoin is not a Ponzi scheme. A Ponzi requires a central operator promising returns and paying early investors with funds from later ones,” Strategy co-founder Michael Saylor said in response.
“Bitcoin has no issuer, no promoter, and no guaranteed return, just an open, decentralized monetary network driven by code and market demand,” Saylor continued.
Pierre Rochard, CEO of The Bitcoin Bond Company, a BTC-backed financial product issuer, said that the UK is a “giant Ponzi scheme” financed by debt.
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