One of the arguments against bitcoin is that it is a ponzi scheme or a negative sum game that is mathematically certain to collapse once it runs out of new users because it is a non-productive asset.
I think this is a misunderstanding of the underlying economics.
While counterintuitive, in theory Bitcoin price can go up forever and provide a net economic benefit to all bitcoin holders(positive sum game) because of it's fixed supply.
Ponzi schemes have to die because once no new users join the network there is zero economic benefit for existing holders, thus there is no reason to remain invested in it and the ponzi has to collapse.
Interestingly this is not the case with Bitcoin as hodling could be able to provide an economic benefit even when the users of the network reach saturation stage.
That is why Bitcoin can in theory sustain itself forever.
Here is why:
With its fixed supply and zero yield the best Bitcoin can do is to preserve your wealth but not add to it. It does not have earnings or pay dividends.
Since human productivity goes up over time as we learn to be more efficient thanks to technology, goods get cheaper over time.
If we merely preserve our wealth we can afford to buy more goods over time. We get richer in practice if we just manage to preserve our wealth.
For example if global productivity grows several percent each year we could withdraw the rate goods get cheaper each year from our BTC holdings while our purchasing power remains the same. We would never run out of money(purchasing power) and could in theory live forever from our investment if it's large enough.
That is more less the same as receiving a yield from an investment.
Gold is an example of a non-productive, non-yielding asset that has returned 7.5% annually since 1971 despite having an annual inflation rate(supply increase) of 1.5%. Without inflation it could have returned 9% annually. Not too bad for a dead rock. Future Bitcoin inflation will be much lower than gold.
Long-term T-Bills had roughly the same return as Gold over the same time period and not all types of bonds or savings accounts have been able to outperform gold. In fact many currency based yielding financial products have not been able to increase purchasing power over the long-term.
Just because something has a yield doesn't automatically mean that you will make money.
The Bitcoin network does have a cost which is passed on to it's users either via inflation or transaction fees but due to decreasing inflation the future network cost is expected to be much smaller than the annual increase in human productivity.
That is why the average bitcoin hodler could increase their purchasing power over time even when the user growth reached saturation stage.
In theory the price could go up forever at the rate the currency against it is traded expands it's money supply and the purchasing power of the holder would go up at the rate of human productivity growth.
The fact that holders are rewarded even when the number of users in the network saturates creates an incentive to hold and even a buyer beyond saturation does not necessarily become the bigger fool as they could still extract an economic benefit from acquiring and holding the asset.
That is why bitcoin could keep running forever while a ponzi must collapse because the economic benefits for a new buyer of a ponzi at saturation stage are negative.
A word of caution:
This is not investment advice but an analysis based on the properties of a fixed supply asset like bitcoin. Just because the price could go up over time doesn't mean it will. In the end the price will be determined by demand and future demand is hard to estimate. If you acquire bitcoin at a price level where demand is higher than future demand you could still lose a lot of money. Even gold had a maximum drawdown of -60% in the past 50 years. There are also regulatory and technological risks that could affect future demand.
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