4 ms·

Right, but it's not the 1920s any more. We live in this highly connected, information rich, rapidly changing world, that is fundamentally different than the 192

Right, but it's not the 1920s any more. We live in this highly connected, information rich, rapidly changing world, that is fundamentally different than the 1920s in many ways. The general public is far more savvy about investments, risks, and bubbles in general than they were in the past. Today, private equity tends to capture almost all of the value before a company goes public. The crazy thing is that a foreign citizen can invest in an American start up without any of these credentials, yet a US citizen cannot.

nullc 6y ago
The cryptocurrency ecosystem broadly demonstrates otherwise: its full of outright scams operating a billion dollar scale.
jcranmer 6y ago
The 90's heralded a lot of optimism about the Internet's role in making information ever easier to access. What we've discovered in the 21st century is that it also makes disinformation easier to access. And perhaps more so, since democratization of content generation means there's fewer chances for curators to pull disinformation. I don't think it's easier for an average person in the 2020's to differentiate between investments, risky investments, and outright scams than the 1920's, were all the regulations to be waived away.
- chrisco255 6y ago
  I think a person in 2020 is far more savvy about the risks than someone in 1920. For one, they're aware of crashes, bubbles, etc. and have probably even lived through at least one of them. They also don't have to trust the advice of a single broker over the telephone. The 2008 real estate bubble was driven by the same kind of speculation that drove the 1920s stock bubble. We are probably already deep into a stock bubble today, in 2020. And yet retail investors can plop down tens of thousands of dollars on stocks through Robinhood or a myriad of other apps, paying no attention to underlying fundamentals in the business.
  - jcranmer 6y ago
    > For one, they're aware of crashes, bubbles, etc. and have probably even lived through at least one of them. The Panic of 1929 was far from the first crash of the 1900s, let alone the only large crash in history. The Panic of 1893 would have been the big crash that everyone was afraid of before 1929, but there were more minor crashes in 1901 and 1907. Railway manias and land speculation-driven crashes litter pretty much every decade of the 19th century. The 21st century is unusual because it's pretty much the first time in modern financial history you make it an entire decade without some sort of recession.
    - smabie 6y ago
      Not much more than a decade, it seems.
mrep 6y ago
> The general public is far more savvy about investments, risks, and bubbles in general than they were in the past. I'd argue the crypto currency and ico hysteria of late proves otherwise.
jkaplowitz 6y ago
> The crazy thing is that a foreign citizen can invest in an American start up without any of these credentials, yet a US citizen cannot. These rules are generally based on the residence of the investor, not their citizenship. I'm an American in Quebec currently, and it's the Quebec/Canadian rules which determine my eligibility to invest while I'm living here, not the SEC's. And in Canada's case, the accredited investor rules are broadly similar to what the US rules were before this announcement, with the same dollar amounts but in Canadian dollars and with a lot of other differences in the details.
- vageli 6y ago
  > > The crazy thing is that a foreign citizen can invest in an American start up without any of these credentials, yet a US citizen cannot. > These rules are generally based on the residence of the investor, not their citizenship. I'm an American in Quebec currently, and it's the Quebec/Canadian rules which determine my eligibility to invest while I'm living here, not the SEC's. And in Canada's case, the accredited investor rules are broadly similar to what the US rules were before this announcement, with the same dollar amounts but in Canadian dollars and with a lot of other differences in the details. Doesn't it have less to do with the jurisdiction in which you're located, and more to do with the jurisdiction in which the offering is located?
  - jkaplowitz 6y ago
    My understanding is that the offering is deemed to happen wherever the investors are (maybe physically or maybe as a residence), but not necessarily where the issuer is. I'm not an expert but have looked into it a bit in the context of potentially being a founder.

nullc 6y ago

The cryptocurrency ecosystem broadly demonstrates otherwise: its full of outright scams operating a billion dollar scale.

jcranmer 6y ago

The 90's heralded a lot of optimism about the Internet's role in making information ever easier to access. What we've discovered in the 21st century is that it also makes disinformation easier to access. And perhaps more so, since democratization of content generation means there's fewer chances for curators to pull disinformation. I don't think it's easier for an average person in the 2020's to differentiate between investments, risky investments, and outright scams than the 1920's, were all the regulations to be waived away.

chrisco255 6y ago
I think a person in 2020 is far more savvy about the risks than someone in 1920. For one, they're aware of crashes, bubbles, etc. and have probably even lived through at least one of them. They also don't have to trust the advice of a single broker over the telephone. The 2008 real estate bubble was driven by the same kind of speculation that drove the 1920s stock bubble. We are probably already deep into a stock bubble today, in 2020. And yet retail investors can plop down tens of thousands of dollars on stocks through Robinhood or a myriad of other apps, paying no attention to underlying fundamentals in the business.
- jcranmer 6y ago
  > For one, they're aware of crashes, bubbles, etc. and have probably even lived through at least one of them. The Panic of 1929 was far from the first crash of the 1900s, let alone the only large crash in history. The Panic of 1893 would have been the big crash that everyone was afraid of before 1929, but there were more minor crashes in 1901 and 1907. Railway manias and land speculation-driven crashes litter pretty much every decade of the 19th century. The 21st century is unusual because it's pretty much the first time in modern financial history you make it an entire decade without some sort of recession.
  - smabie 6y ago
    Not much more than a decade, it seems.

mrep 6y ago

> The general public is far more savvy about investments, risks, and bubbles in general than they were in the past. I'd argue the crypto currency and ico hysteria of late proves otherwise.

jkaplowitz 6y ago

> The crazy thing is that a foreign citizen can invest in an American start up without any of these credentials, yet a US citizen cannot. These rules are generally based on the residence of the investor, not their citizenship. I'm an American in Quebec currently, and it's the Quebec/Canadian rules which determine my eligibility to invest while I'm living here, not the SEC's. And in Canada's case, the accredited investor rules are broadly similar to what the US rules were before this announcement, with the same dollar amounts but in Canadian dollars and with a lot of other differences in the details.

vageli 6y ago
> > The crazy thing is that a foreign citizen can invest in an American start up without any of these credentials, yet a US citizen cannot. > These rules are generally based on the residence of the investor, not their citizenship. I'm an American in Quebec currently, and it's the Quebec/Canadian rules which determine my eligibility to invest while I'm living here, not the SEC's. And in Canada's case, the accredited investor rules are broadly similar to what the US rules were before this announcement, with the same dollar amounts but in Canadian dollars and with a lot of other differences in the details. Doesn't it have less to do with the jurisdiction in which you're located, and more to do with the jurisdiction in which the offering is located?
- jkaplowitz 6y ago
  My understanding is that the offering is deemed to happen wherever the investors are (maybe physically or maybe as a residence), but not necessarily where the issuer is. I'm not an expert but have looked into it a bit in the context of potentially being a founder.