I'd say Ponzi-scheme is a justified classification, since returns are funded by new entrants or additional purchases, instead of the asset producing value itself like a company stock or a house.
Even something like gold with no value production - whose price is quite stable because of that by the way - has value because people want it for jewellery and industry.
You could say the same for overvalued stock like TSLA but I don't think anyone would call Tesla a Ponzi scheme. Most of it's value is speculation not actual profits or sales.
> Most of it's value is speculation not actual profits or sales.
“Most” is the key difference: a share of Tesla is fractional ownership in a real business which has proven capable of selling real products which people want. Some fraction of that is definitely speculative but far from all of it, and there's no reason to think that the value would decline to zero under any feasible economic situation.
A Bitcoin, in contrast, has no value other than what you can convince someone else to buy it for. Nobody needs it to conduct business, it's trivial to set up competing blockchains, and the deflationary model is designed to make you profitfrom everyone who starts buying later despite not having created any new value.
