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The bit that I found interesting is when one of the witnesses (either Jay Clayton or Chris Giancarlo) mentioned that they tried to get their college-age kids to

The bit that I found interesting is when one of the witnesses (either Jay Clayton or Chris Giancarlo) mentioned that they tried to get their college-age kids to invest in stock market. Even gave them some cash to play around with but it just never caught on. Then Bitcoin exploded and they naturally gravitated to it. He could've taken this story into many directions, basically saying that the whole thing is madness because we have teenagers playing in this market. But he didn't. Instead it kind of sounded like he wanted everyone to embrace it... but still put regulations in place :)

JustAnotherPat 9y ago
Compound interest and 5% yearly returns are boring. Technical analysis is too complicated for kids. "WHEN MOON??" is much more relatable. Go to the crypto subreddits and look at all the people who laugh at stocks, saying market returns are basically worthless.
- to_bpr 9y ago
  I wonder if this is due to young people feeling like the status of previous generations (house, cars, kids, vacations, etc.) seem so much further out of reach than ever?
  - ryandrake 9y ago
    That and the trend that the avenues frequently cited as ways to achieve this status (hard work, education, dump your money into the stocks and pray) are increasingly being exposed as obvious bullshit.
    - JustAnotherPat 9y ago
      > dump your money into the stocks and pray) are increasingly being exposed as obvious bullshit. I'm not exactly sure how stocks have been exposed as bullshit given they've produced above average returns, especially for young people who have gotten in after 2008.
      - frgtpsswrdlame 9y ago
        Because they all remember 2008? The depression had a lasting influence on the people who lived through it, they hoarded, kept money under their beds, stuff like that because they knew what it was like when the banks failed. The great recession is obviously much milder but it did expose to many young people that stocks aren't as safe as they think.
        joshuahedlund 9y ago
        For me the takeaway has been the exact opposite. I was skittish about putting retirement money into the stock market circa 2010 cuz I saw ten years of no net gains and feared that was a new normal. But I was doubly wrong - I hadn't factored in dividends, and a few years later stocks were double their pre-2008 peak. The bottom ended up being a rare chance (for the still-employed majority) to quadruple those upcoming returns. Even now, another 50%-bottom from peak would be double the previous bottom. The fundamentals behind the expectations of capitalistic returns seem less shaken than ever.
  - ada1981 9y ago
    There is more and more pressure to signal fame & success... It's a big act that needs constant reinforcement via social media. Our narcissism has reached a fever pitch while the traditional methods of success no longer support the aspirational narrative. It's no longer work hard, goto college, get a house and family.. Everyone needs to be a motivational / spiritual / business guru with a million followers, "passive income" and a schedule of traveling the world to exotic locales. That lifestyle is also required now, not in 50 years, so fake it till you make it and bring on the debt / Airbnb / Lyft "sidehustle". CryptoCurrency is the only lottery ticket left that provides any appearance of hope of covering people's bets and supports the current narratives of unbounded wealth with little to no work.
  - majormajor 9y ago
    I was that young once. Even back then, the stock market was "obviously" worthless. If I have a hundred bucks, what the fuck good is having a hundred and five bucks in a year? I needed tens of thousands of dollars in order to fell like my life had changed. So I ignored the stock market, and gravitated to poker. Same shit, different day. Chasing big returns because they're the only kind that would've moved the needle. I don't think it's that bad or good, just natural, even in a more exuberant-feeling time. Everyone in parallel comments is talking about "it's because they don't think they can get a 9-to-5 and a house like their parents" as if having a steady job and being like your parents was ever an aspirational goal. Parents are boring! Nine to five is boring! Actors, athletes, rock stars, billionaires - that's the real goal. This wasn't created by social media, it wasn't created by 2008, it goes back decades at least. Picture yourself being 15-20 years old. There are basically zero non-lottery-ticket opportunities available to you to make serious money. Your opportunities to exercise full-on adult agency are still fairly limited. * Your immediate employment opportunities are things like fast food and pizza delivery * You won't have a college degree for years even if you think you'd graduate into a middle-class type of job * Even if you doubled down on your schoolwork, you won't generally be separated that much from the rest of your class. And grades aren't directly translatable into money and popularity, anyway. It takes money to make money, and you don't have money. Looking for moonshots is a somewhat rational action in that situation - it's the only one with any chance of producing the desired outcome.
- handzhiev 9y ago
  Why is every comment containing humor downvoted on Hackernews? (Mine has no humor, mind you!)
  - grzm 9y ago
    I suspect it's an effort to keep the signal to noise ratio high. In reference to April Fool's gags on HN, 'dang commented a while back: > "A word about humorlessness, since it's bound to come up. People who complain about HN's humorlessness have a point, but not because we're against humor. We like laughing as much as anyone. It's because empirically, a culture of humor means a flood of lame humor, and HN's goal is to optimize for signal/noise ratio. As with any optimization, there are inevitably tradeoffs." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7506793 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7506793
    - handzhiev 9y ago
      I think the parent comment has more value than just humor, but feel like it's being punished for not being serious enough.
maxxxxx 9y ago
I don't get the idea of "investing in cryptocurrencies". If they are ever to be used as currency they should be relatively stable and predictable. The current status of extreme deflation makes any serious use almost impossible.
- darawk 9y ago
  You're investing in a future where they are used as currencies. If today you could buy USD for 10 cents, knowing that it'd be worth its value today, that'd be worthwhile. Now, lots of people don't think cryptos will ever achieve that kind of success, and they may be right. But that is the investment thesis nonetheless.
  - hartator 9y ago
    Except 10 cents of USD was worth more 50 years ago than now.
    - programmarchy 9y ago
      Because of the Fed, which is an organization many people don't want manipulating (devaluing) their currency. Monetary freedom is a big draw for many in the crypto community.
      - dajohnson89 9y ago
        now it's whales and mining farms
      - marnett 9y ago
        But the draw is near fantasy levels of misunderstanding and delusion. Monetary policy is not that simple.
        allthenews 9y ago
        Sure, but one could argue that our sanctioned manipulation of fiat currency is similarly based on delusions of simplicity and/or understanding. We still don't seem able to reliably avoid recessions, and no one is predicting the market with any reproducible accuracy. Perhaps such complex, chaotic systems may be better off sans regulation. Especially something like cryptocurrency, which does not have the same properties as paper fiat, although it is being treated as such. I personally have less faith in institutions run by humans and bogged down by dated regulations than I do in an instantaneously fluctuating near free market. If you can't trust people to invest in currency because of complexity, what makes you think you can trust them to regulate your money, and make decisions that affect the value of your assets for you?
vkou 9y ago
It boggles my mind that this was cited as a positive anecdote. If you believe in markets and capitalism, then it makes perfect sense to consider children investing into the returns of capitalism (By, say, buying an index fund) to be a good thing. You expect the economy to grow, you know that the economic system encourages wealth to flow to investors, you want everyone to be an investor, all is well in the world, let's have a drink and move on. With cryptocurrencies, though, its all pump and dumps and spirit advice animals, and 'everyone decided that these baseball cards are worth a lot of money, so let's trade them around' while the Tether Printing press is going full swing. Capitalism insists that we'll all be better off if money is invested into businesses. It, or its proxy effects has given us automobiles, iPhones, and has funded and built millions of profitable businesses that solve trillions of dollars of user needs. What exactly has the crypto mania built? You believe that cryptocurrencies will build worthwhile businesses? Why did Bitcoin grow 10000% over the last 18 months, then? Why is IOTA worth 6 billion dollars? It's as if a bunch of people looked at Wall Street, and said: "Gee, wouldn't it be amazing to make as much money as they do, but without the side effect of financing the economy that gave us airplanes and automobiles and cellphones and the McRib. What is the social ROI on the money and electricity wasted on the crypto-bubble? People argue that once all externalities are accounted for, it is negative for capitalism, but at least we can all point to a Prius, or a 767, or a grocery store, or a 300-unit condo in Seattle, and say: "Well, it played an important role in building that."

JustAnotherPat 9y ago

Compound interest and 5% yearly returns are boring. Technical analysis is too complicated for kids. "WHEN MOON??" is much more relatable. Go to the crypto subreddits and look at all the people who laugh at stocks, saying market returns are basically worthless.

to_bpr 9y ago
I wonder if this is due to young people feeling like the status of previous generations (house, cars, kids, vacations, etc.) seem so much further out of reach than ever?
- ryandrake 9y ago
  That and the trend that the avenues frequently cited as ways to achieve this status (hard work, education, dump your money into the stocks and pray) are increasingly being exposed as obvious bullshit.
  - JustAnotherPat 9y ago
    > dump your money into the stocks and pray) are increasingly being exposed as obvious bullshit. I'm not exactly sure how stocks have been exposed as bullshit given they've produced above average returns, especially for young people who have gotten in after 2008.
    - frgtpsswrdlame 9y ago
      Because they all remember 2008? The depression had a lasting influence on the people who lived through it, they hoarded, kept money under their beds, stuff like that because they knew what it was like when the banks failed. The great recession is obviously much milder but it did expose to many young people that stocks aren't as safe as they think.
      - joshuahedlund 9y ago
        For me the takeaway has been the exact opposite. I was skittish about putting retirement money into the stock market circa 2010 cuz I saw ten years of no net gains and feared that was a new normal. But I was doubly wrong - I hadn't factored in dividends, and a few years later stocks were double their pre-2008 peak. The bottom ended up being a rare chance (for the still-employed majority) to quadruple those upcoming returns. Even now, another 50%-bottom from peak would be double the previous bottom. The fundamentals behind the expectations of capitalistic returns seem less shaken than ever.
- ada1981 9y ago
  There is more and more pressure to signal fame & success... It's a big act that needs constant reinforcement via social media. Our narcissism has reached a fever pitch while the traditional methods of success no longer support the aspirational narrative. It's no longer work hard, goto college, get a house and family.. Everyone needs to be a motivational / spiritual / business guru with a million followers, "passive income" and a schedule of traveling the world to exotic locales. That lifestyle is also required now, not in 50 years, so fake it till you make it and bring on the debt / Airbnb / Lyft "sidehustle". CryptoCurrency is the only lottery ticket left that provides any appearance of hope of covering people's bets and supports the current narratives of unbounded wealth with little to no work.
- majormajor 9y ago
  I was that young once. Even back then, the stock market was "obviously" worthless. If I have a hundred bucks, what the fuck good is having a hundred and five bucks in a year? I needed tens of thousands of dollars in order to fell like my life had changed. So I ignored the stock market, and gravitated to poker. Same shit, different day. Chasing big returns because they're the only kind that would've moved the needle. I don't think it's that bad or good, just natural, even in a more exuberant-feeling time. Everyone in parallel comments is talking about "it's because they don't think they can get a 9-to-5 and a house like their parents" as if having a steady job and being like your parents was ever an aspirational goal. Parents are boring! Nine to five is boring! Actors, athletes, rock stars, billionaires - that's the real goal. This wasn't created by social media, it wasn't created by 2008, it goes back decades at least. Picture yourself being 15-20 years old. There are basically zero non-lottery-ticket opportunities available to you to make serious money. Your opportunities to exercise full-on adult agency are still fairly limited. * Your immediate employment opportunities are things like fast food and pizza delivery * You won't have a college degree for years even if you think you'd graduate into a middle-class type of job * Even if you doubled down on your schoolwork, you won't generally be separated that much from the rest of your class. And grades aren't directly translatable into money and popularity, anyway. It takes money to make money, and you don't have money. Looking for moonshots is a somewhat rational action in that situation - it's the only one with any chance of producing the desired outcome.
handzhiev 9y ago
Why is every comment containing humor downvoted on Hackernews? (Mine has no humor, mind you!)
- grzm 9y ago
  I suspect it's an effort to keep the signal to noise ratio high. In reference to April Fool's gags on HN, 'dang commented a while back: > "A word about humorlessness, since it's bound to come up. People who complain about HN's humorlessness have a point, but not because we're against humor. We like laughing as much as anyone. It's because empirically, a culture of humor means a flood of lame humor, and HN's goal is to optimize for signal/noise ratio. As with any optimization, there are inevitably tradeoffs." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7506793 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7506793
  - handzhiev 9y ago
    I think the parent comment has more value than just humor, but feel like it's being punished for not being serious enough.

maxxxxx 9y ago

I don't get the idea of "investing in cryptocurrencies". If they are ever to be used as currency they should be relatively stable and predictable. The current status of extreme deflation makes any serious use almost impossible.

darawk 9y ago
You're investing in a future where they are used as currencies. If today you could buy USD for 10 cents, knowing that it'd be worth its value today, that'd be worthwhile. Now, lots of people don't think cryptos will ever achieve that kind of success, and they may be right. But that is the investment thesis nonetheless.
- hartator 9y ago
  Except 10 cents of USD was worth more 50 years ago than now.
  - programmarchy 9y ago
    Because of the Fed, which is an organization many people don't want manipulating (devaluing) their currency. Monetary freedom is a big draw for many in the crypto community.
    - dajohnson89 9y ago
      now it's whales and mining farms
    - marnett 9y ago
      But the draw is near fantasy levels of misunderstanding and delusion. Monetary policy is not that simple.
      - allthenews 9y ago
        Sure, but one could argue that our sanctioned manipulation of fiat currency is similarly based on delusions of simplicity and/or understanding. We still don't seem able to reliably avoid recessions, and no one is predicting the market with any reproducible accuracy. Perhaps such complex, chaotic systems may be better off sans regulation. Especially something like cryptocurrency, which does not have the same properties as paper fiat, although it is being treated as such. I personally have less faith in institutions run by humans and bogged down by dated regulations than I do in an instantaneously fluctuating near free market. If you can't trust people to invest in currency because of complexity, what makes you think you can trust them to regulate your money, and make decisions that affect the value of your assets for you?

vkou 9y ago

It boggles my mind that this was cited as a positive anecdote. If you believe in markets and capitalism, then it makes perfect sense to consider children investing into the returns of capitalism (By, say, buying an index fund) to be a good thing. You expect the economy to grow, you know that the economic system encourages wealth to flow to investors, you want everyone to be an investor, all is well in the world, let's have a drink and move on. With cryptocurrencies, though, its all pump and dumps and spirit advice animals, and 'everyone decided that these baseball cards are worth a lot of money, so let's trade them around' while the Tether Printing press is going full swing. Capitalism insists that we'll all be better off if money is invested into businesses. It, or its proxy effects has given us automobiles, iPhones, and has funded and built millions of profitable businesses that solve trillions of dollars of user needs. What exactly has the crypto mania built? You believe that cryptocurrencies will build worthwhile businesses? Why did Bitcoin grow 10000% over the last 18 months, then? Why is IOTA worth 6 billion dollars? It's as if a bunch of people looked at Wall Street, and said: "Gee, wouldn't it be amazing to make as much money as they do, but without the side effect of financing the economy that gave us airplanes and automobiles and cellphones and the McRib. What is the social ROI on the money and electricity wasted on the crypto-bubble? People argue that once all externalities are accounted for, it is negative for capitalism, but at least we can all point to a Prius, or a 767, or a grocery store, or a 300-unit condo in Seattle, and say: "Well, it played an important role in building that."