The inflated prices paid by those who join later form the profits of those in on it early on, without a genuine increase in value being involved.

1) there's no 'con-man' running the grift, in fact these guys were unknown for many years.
2) there's no 'skimming' by the grifter going on
3) there's no falsification of records
4) early 'investors' in ponzi schemes end up screwed like later investors in most cases, it's only the grifter running the con who actually profits if he pulls it off.

"Value" is whatever people think it is. Fiat money has no intrinsic value and in fact currencies crash like in Venezuela w/o being Ponzi schemes. Gold certainly 'costs' more that it's really 'worth' in terms of utility. So does a $10M Original Monet.

1) it appears there was, from this story. That the conman/men were unknown is pretty essential for a grift.
2) it appears there was, from this story
3) the hiding of who stood to gain from the inflation, and the anonymous 'creator', is damn close to falsification. And the accusation here is falsification.
4) Not necessarily.

The point is that it looks like bitcoin was started to enrich those in on it, at the expense of the gullible who thought they'd get rich too if they joined in. So it's a Ponzi scheme.

Digital currencies in general have more akin to a ponzi scheme than its backers would like to admit. It really is an interesting combination of securities fraud-like offerings, common fraud and a ponzi scheme.

The security fraud comes into play in that the promoters are "selling" coins at an ICO. The SEC is slowly catching up with technology, but I expect legal ICO's to be largely eliminated very soon. There is also similarity to "pump and dump" schemes going on. Early promoters of a coin get their's cheap, then talk up and promote the market, driving prices up. They then dump their coins on the same market.

The ponzi scheme-ish part is new "miners" or buyers on the market investing money to acquire new coins, then convincing subsequent buyers/miners to keep it going. The early miners get the bulk of the profits, as they got in at low value, and a piece of every transaction goes to them for processing the sales (not all miners do this, but almost all the early ones do as it is lucrative and a good use of already paid-for hardware). Admittedly not a direct comparison, but there are similarities.

In the end, most coins are nothing but a big con (IMHO). Bitcoin, to me at least, seems to be somewhat of a dead end because of its ultra-high transaction costs. Not that it won't be used in the future as a hedge or store of value, but it is fundamentally unable in its current form to replace normal currency.

Could another take its place as the big-dog, solving many of its problems? Maybe. We will see.

You did say it was the opposite of a Ponzi scheme.

Storing all this data on server farms is an expensive proposition. And they don't seem shy about claiming first dibs on generated power:

http://www.wweek.com/news/business/2018/02/21/bitcoin-miners-are-flocking-to-oregon-for-cheap-electricity-should-we-give-them-a-boost/

Last I checked, it was around $18 for each transfer, most of which is the cost of electricity to do the blockchain computations.

As Segwit keeps being implemented, and certainly as the Lightning network unfolds, costs should drop even further.

https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/bitcoin-transactionfees.html#3m

I'm not in that market, but it does fascinate me.