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Where do they find these people? Is this what a lot of "ordinary" people do? Take out tens of thousands of dollars in loans to invest in cryptocurrency? Are the

Where do they find these people? Is this what a lot of "ordinary" people do? Take out tens of thousands of dollars in loans to invest in cryptocurrency? Are the people profiled in the article a representative sample? Or are we hearing about the worst cases only because they are so notable and out of the ordinary? Will this post ever stop asking questions?? Stories like these are full of anecdote and short on facts, it's hard for me to know what to make of them.

21 8y ago
I work in a software firm. Last autumn half of my team was "investing" in cryptos. People who never traded before, who didn't knew what a bid or an ask was, and who complained to me that exchange interfaces were terribly complicated. Some of them were mulling breaking their 401k (or whatever the term is) so that they could invest the money here. In January they were saying to me "it's not a loss if you don't sell, right?" Literally 0 financial education.
- hyprCoin 8y ago
  What's the problem here? That software devs were investing in a potential future? That they were getting wrapped up in hype? I bet these new investors learned quite a bit about markets and will be a little more knowledgeful when it comes to negotiating equity.
- gammateam 8y ago
  > People who never traded before, who didn't knew what a bid or an ask was and the more amazing thing to me was that they also didn't even want to know the markets were moving too fast to learn anything, too fast to learn about the history, too fast to put any asset under scrutiny because there is another shiny new thing to trade with a cool name and interesting founding team or as the ZCash employees and fans are programmed to say "the math is interesting and the cryptographers are highly regarded so--" THAT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE CRYPTOCURRENCY TRADERS
guildenstern 8y ago
Spend any time on the crypto currency subreddits and you’ll find dozens of people who took out >$20k loans to buy cryptocurrency. There are people still doing it. My co-working office space was filled with people in December talking non-stop about buying crypto currency, although all the crypto currency traders are long gone now. I don’t think people losing tens of thousands are the norm but absolutely there is a never ending list of people who’ve lost most of what they put in, whether that was hundreds or low thousands.
freeflight 8y ago
I've realized that not having any debt seems to be the exception rather than the norm, even tho I'm not even from the US. But it's not that big of a mental jump to make, isn't college education also a kind of long-term gamble with debt? You take on huge debt to get an education that will maybe allow you to make a high enough income to pay back your debt in a reasonable time. For some that gamble pays off, for others, not so much. As a personal anecdote: I'm far from being wealthy, but I've always made sure to never have debt. A very good friend of mine, only a few years older, is right now going through personal bankruptcy due to some rather adventurous choices in his younger years. But he still doesn't seem like he's learned anything. When talking about potential financial investments he always treats me like I'm some kind of millionaire as my good credit history, and meager savings, could easily get me very high loans. It's like some people see their total credit limit, across several institutions, as their actual own capital in a very naive "As long as somebody is gonna give it to me, it's mine!" way.
paulpauper 8y ago
More common than you think. If ppl take out debt for cars, vacations, home remodeling, they can do it for crypto currency too
danieka 8y ago
Was that a subtle riff off Newsroom? If not, post well crafted.
rapnie 8y ago
Probably you hear about them because they are so notable, like the Dutch family that became world news when they went all-in [0], but there will be many who are over-invested. [0] https://www.cnbc.com/2017/10/17/this-family-bet-it-all-on-bitcoin.html https://www.cnbc.com/2017/10/17/this-family-bet-it-all-on-bi...
- tim333 8y ago
  There's this guy who sold his home to put it all into Litecoin. That was in Sept 2016 so he probably did quite well https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5v5y3icu6YY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5v5y3icu6YY

21 8y ago

I work in a software firm. Last autumn half of my team was "investing" in cryptos. People who never traded before, who didn't knew what a bid or an ask was, and who complained to me that exchange interfaces were terribly complicated. Some of them were mulling breaking their 401k (or whatever the term is) so that they could invest the money here. In January they were saying to me "it's not a loss if you don't sell, right?" Literally 0 financial education.

hyprCoin 8y ago
What's the problem here? That software devs were investing in a potential future? That they were getting wrapped up in hype? I bet these new investors learned quite a bit about markets and will be a little more knowledgeful when it comes to negotiating equity.
gammateam 8y ago
> People who never traded before, who didn't knew what a bid or an ask was and the more amazing thing to me was that they also didn't even want to know the markets were moving too fast to learn anything, too fast to learn about the history, too fast to put any asset under scrutiny because there is another shiny new thing to trade with a cool name and interesting founding team or as the ZCash employees and fans are programmed to say "the math is interesting and the cryptographers are highly regarded so--" THAT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE CRYPTOCURRENCY TRADERS

guildenstern 8y ago

Spend any time on the crypto currency subreddits and you’ll find dozens of people who took out >$20k loans to buy cryptocurrency. There are people still doing it. My co-working office space was filled with people in December talking non-stop about buying crypto currency, although all the crypto currency traders are long gone now. I don’t think people losing tens of thousands are the norm but absolutely there is a never ending list of people who’ve lost most of what they put in, whether that was hundreds or low thousands.

freeflight 8y ago

I've realized that not having any debt seems to be the exception rather than the norm, even tho I'm not even from the US. But it's not that big of a mental jump to make, isn't college education also a kind of long-term gamble with debt? You take on huge debt to get an education that will maybe allow you to make a high enough income to pay back your debt in a reasonable time. For some that gamble pays off, for others, not so much. As a personal anecdote: I'm far from being wealthy, but I've always made sure to never have debt. A very good friend of mine, only a few years older, is right now going through personal bankruptcy due to some rather adventurous choices in his younger years. But he still doesn't seem like he's learned anything. When talking about potential financial investments he always treats me like I'm some kind of millionaire as my good credit history, and meager savings, could easily get me very high loans. It's like some people see their total credit limit, across several institutions, as their actual own capital in a very naive "As long as somebody is gonna give it to me, it's mine!" way.

paulpauper 8y ago

More common than you think. If ppl take out debt for cars, vacations, home remodeling, they can do it for crypto currency too

danieka 8y ago

Was that a subtle riff off Newsroom? If not, post well crafted.

rapnie 8y ago

Probably you hear about them because they are so notable, like the Dutch family that became world news when they went all-in [0], but there will be many who are over-invested. [0] https://www.cnbc.com/2017/10/17/this-family-bet-it-all-on-bitcoin.html https://www.cnbc.com/2017/10/17/this-family-bet-it-all-on-bi...

tim333 8y ago
There's this guy who sold his home to put it all into Litecoin. That was in Sept 2016 so he probably did quite well https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5v5y3icu6YY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5v5y3icu6YY