3 ms·

The question is whether people have invested a significant amount of their life savings in bitcoin, not whether they own a significant amount of bitcoin proport

The question is whether people have invested a significant amount of their life savings in bitcoin, not whether they own a significant amount of bitcoin proportional to the total market. For people who have, they may be panicking about how they'll support themselves in their later years, they may have invested in a lifestyle with the expectation that they can pay for it with Bitcoin's growth, and so on and so forth. People's lives may be ruined by this - they've often essentially been scammed into investing in cryptocurrency because they cannot understand the risks. If a financial adviser were promoting bitcoin to most people, it'd be illegal. I don't think it's fair to say this is OK because it won't affect people you know.

matwood 9y ago
The stats were not just people I know. One of the coin sites pulled them together. If 3k is a significant amount of someone's life savings, then they should not have put in BTC. Proportional to the total market is important because it puts into perspective how few people will really be impacted, and if it is something that could spread into the economy as a whole. Found the stats: https://coinspectator.com/news/127996/survey-finds-average-bitcoin-investment-under-3k-most-plan-to-own-less-than-3-years https://coinspectator.com/news/127996/survey-finds-average-b...
- vertex-four 9y ago
  > If 3k is a significant amount of someone's life savings, then they should not have put in BTC. No, they shouldn't have. But many people don't actually understand what a high-risk market is, and especially not one as volatile as Bitcoin. They've heard their cousin/friend/waiter made a couple thousand bucks off it, done some googling, and found several thousand people saying this is the next big thing, with fancy graphs and miracle use cases and so on and so forth to prove it. Big well-known news sources like Bloomberg talking about it, and how big well-known investment banks are interested in it. This is the end result of what lack of regulation looks like. People get bamboozled - similar to many scams, you might get tricked into losing a couple of hundred bucks and calling it a life lesson, or you might get scammed into losing your life savings and winding up in severe debt. A few people (and it's more than a few) being impacted enough to cause them to be extremely worried about how they'll pay their bills, how they'll afford to keep a roof over their head in their later years, is important. It's maybe not as important to you as widespread economic collapse, but it's nothing to pretend isn't an issue. The comment you were originally replying to wasn't talking about economic collapse - it was talking about the impact on individual people.
- saalweachter 9y ago
  > If 3k is a significant amount of someone's life savings, then they should not have put in BTC. Is that an appeal to consequences or did you have a different point?

matwood 9y ago

The stats were not just people I know. One of the coin sites pulled them together. If 3k is a significant amount of someone's life savings, then they should not have put in BTC. Proportional to the total market is important because it puts into perspective how few people will really be impacted, and if it is something that could spread into the economy as a whole. Found the stats: https://coinspectator.com/news/127996/survey-finds-average-bitcoin-investment-under-3k-most-plan-to-own-less-than-3-years https://coinspectator.com/news/127996/survey-finds-average-b...

vertex-four 9y ago
> If 3k is a significant amount of someone's life savings, then they should not have put in BTC. No, they shouldn't have. But many people don't actually understand what a high-risk market is, and especially not one as volatile as Bitcoin. They've heard their cousin/friend/waiter made a couple thousand bucks off it, done some googling, and found several thousand people saying this is the next big thing, with fancy graphs and miracle use cases and so on and so forth to prove it. Big well-known news sources like Bloomberg talking about it, and how big well-known investment banks are interested in it. This is the end result of what lack of regulation looks like. People get bamboozled - similar to many scams, you might get tricked into losing a couple of hundred bucks and calling it a life lesson, or you might get scammed into losing your life savings and winding up in severe debt. A few people (and it's more than a few) being impacted enough to cause them to be extremely worried about how they'll pay their bills, how they'll afford to keep a roof over their head in their later years, is important. It's maybe not as important to you as widespread economic collapse, but it's nothing to pretend isn't an issue. The comment you were originally replying to wasn't talking about economic collapse - it was talking about the impact on individual people.
saalweachter 9y ago
> If 3k is a significant amount of someone's life savings, then they should not have put in BTC. Is that an appeal to consequences or did you have a different point?