You say retailers should be protected against themselves through regulation. Interestingly my stance is the complete opposite: the only markets where retailers

You say retailers should be protected against themselves through regulation. Interestingly my stance is the complete opposite: the only markets where retailers have by far the best opportunity of making a buck are decentralized unregulated markets. Why do I say this? Regulations of the "normal" (US) financial markets have rigged the game in a completely unfair way at the expense of retail investors and pension funds. They are referred to by institutions as "dumb money". Not so much because retail is dumb at investing, but because they are forced to play by different rules that guarantee that retail loses most of the time compared to the institutions they trade against. If you don't know what I'm talking about or think that I'm a conspiracy theorist, you might want to google: "wash trading" (deliberate illegal price manipulation by trading back and forth between large firms on "the same team"), share rehypothecation / short selling more than 100% of the float, illegal naked short selling, selling of order flow (Robinghood), market makers like Citadel scalping off every single retail and pension fund trade for their own benefit, complex order types at various exchanges that retail doesn't have access too that have been designed specifically to benefit certain trading institutions, metals price market manipulation and so on and so forth: https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/jpmorgan-to-pay-%24920-mln-fine-for-manipulating-precious-metals-treasury-market-2020-09-29 https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/jpmorgan-to-pay-%24920-mln-f... One of the main root causes of this all (including the 2008 crash and the flash crash) is that hedge funds and other institutions have been in bed with the SEC. AKA: corruption and conflicts of interest. In the many cases where the SEC takes action, the fines are completely disproportional (way way lower) than whatever the institutional criminals made with their behavior. Example: the almost 1 billion USD fine that JP Morgan paid in the link above is a fraction of what they made on metals market price manipulation. This means that retailers (the poor and middle class) are essentially paying a "tax" to the rich through the money they lose on trading against big firms. All of the above is almost certainly still ongoing, because: why wouldn't it be? Nothing changed. The fines for cheating are still tiny compared to the gains. Here's an interesting interview with an ex-high-frequency-trader (Citadel) about the types of conflicts of interest (and cheating) in that type of trading. In case you're curious for more substantiation of my weird opinion: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYct0XX0uTU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYct0XX0uTU Besides. IMO the adequate article title should be "What Happens to Stocks and Cryptocurrencies When the Fed NEVER Stops Raining Money?". For the past 20 years the trend was clear: lower interest rates, negative interest rates and now helicopter money. Why would the FED stop now? or in the future? I don't see how they could? Assuming I'm right this means that a guaranteed way to lose buying power is to keep your savings in USD. Do you know that joke about the FED raising interest rates? Right. They didn't and won't. (just my opinion) All of the above is why companies like Tesla starting buying crypto (Tesla was almost shorted into bankruptcy. Likely by Citadel and the Bill Gates family fund among others) and this is why Elon Tweeted something like "Bitcoin, in retrospect it will seem inevitable". I believe he's just venting his frustration about the rigged unfair markets that almost cost him his company. To me personally those Tweets made a lot of sense instantly.