Crypto currencies could be a total scam

I was recently watching a documentary on ponzi schemes and other scams. Pretty interesting to see the history of what kind of stupid ideas were pitched to people. One recurring theme is that the fraudster pitches some elaborate, often ridiculous thing (for example special emu oil). Another famous one in China was a massive ponzi scheme where cardboard boxes full of ants were sold to people as special ants with healing abilities.

I am not ruling out the possibility that crypto coins of all types (BTC, ETH, etc) could be total scams or ponzi schemes. BTC is already known to have heavily concentrated original ownership (the whales) so it might have originated as an ingenious pump-and-dump scheme. The other coins might then be copy-cats, motivated to duplicate the same basic scheme in which some original owners first create a coin, and then engage in a massive PR campaign to entice others to bid up the value of that thing.

In other words you start with nothing. Then you spin a (very elaborate) story of why value exists, involving a lot of technical jargon that most people can't understand anyway. You convince people that the thing which started as nothing, is now worth spending money on. Then you take their money.

The story of WHY the coins are valuable, based on the elaborate mathematical structure, is a bit too elaborate and exotic for my taste. And I say that as someone who has worked professionally in cryptography; I've had meetings with entire teams of PhD mathematicians as we studied these things. They are interesting, yes.

The crypto "coins" stories are just a bit too fancy, too extravagant overall. It's a bit like the emu oil, or cardboard boxes full of ants. Personally, they set off my bull**** detector. At the same time they are interesting mathematical concepts with merit. The algorithms are certainly real, and work.

Consider for a moment that the interesting technological aspects could be the hook, perhaps even the misdirection, as the scam artists operate traditional pump-and-dump. The internet-based anonymity that's baked into crypto currencies could actually be the technical innovation that keeps this scam going longer than was traditionally possible. In the past, fraud artists had to meet people and sell them the scams, either in person or by mail. But today the scam artists can conceal their identities, create the coins, and then operate the entire PR campaign all from a distance, anonymously.

My point here is ... for those of you who are buying into these stories, don't rule out the possibility that they might be total scams. And I don't just mean the scammers around the peripheries, doing ICOs and stuff. I mean that the structure and innovation itself might, fundamentally, be a giant scam.