11 ms·

I actually hate people disavowing themselves of responsibility here. While there is definitely some shady stuff in Crypto (particularly NFTs, which seem to be 9

by jmyeet 5y ago

I actually hate people disavowing themselves of responsibility here. While there is definitely some shady stuff in Crypto (particularly NFTs, which seem to be 99% scams), there's a certain level of personal responsibility required here. People saw the meteoric rise of Bitcoin and got a serious case of FOMO. Everyone wanted to be on the next Bitcoin. This, ultimately, is the American Dream: to get rich by doing nothing other than getting lucky and being able to say how smart you are. Not by creating any kind of value. People should be honest and admit (at least to themselves) that they didn't understand what they were investing in let alone believe in it fundamentally. They just wanted to get rich.

raiyu 5y ago
The American dream is to make it through hard work, what you are referring to is simple greed and laziness and it’s been around since humanity attained consciousness.
- sbarre 5y ago
  > The American dream is to make it through hard work Now that's the actual con, or at least a pipe dream. Hard work is never enough. Luck plays a huge factor but few who get lucky, and then rich, will ever admit to that part.
  - fifticon 5y ago
    It's a minor detail: "through the hard work of OTHERS".
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - bitexploder 5y ago
    I admit it. Many of my peers do. Luck is fickle and hard quantify. Effort and decision making less so. It is at least obvious why people have such a bias.
    - sbarre 5y ago
      Of course, saying "I got lucky" is not the story most successful people want to tell themselves.. I am not implying it is all luck, but there is never no luck involved in success.
  - marcusverus 5y ago
    > Now that's the actual con, or at least a pipe dream. Hard work is never enough. This seems like a bad faith, intentional misunderstanding of the concept of hard work. You're right, mindless hard work (with no proactive consideration for your own life trajectory) is not enough to "make it". If you take the first minimum wage job you find and you work hard at that job for 40 years, you're not going to make it. That doesn't invalidate the American Dream. The American Dream isn't "if you work hard, the American Dream fairy will appear and present you with a house, a car and a white picket fence", it's "if you work hard at making it, you can quite easily make it". This presupposes that a given worker will take responsibility for their ability to earn, and be willing to course correct if they are not on a good path toward "making it". > Luck plays a huge factor but few who get lucky, and then rich, will ever admit to that part. Nonsense. The goal of the American Dream was never to be Jeff Bezos. It was to live a comfortable life. In that sense, the American Dream is being realized by the vast majority of Americans every day. The median income of a middle-class household in this country is 78K,[0] which puts them in the ~94th percentile in global income.[1] [0]https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/09/06/the-american-middle-class-is-stable-in-size-but-losing-ground-financially-to-upper-income-families/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/09/06/the-america... [1]https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2018/business/global-income-calculator/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2018/business/global...
    - heisenbit 5y ago
      The Pew Research article you are quoting show a considerably shrinking middle class over the past decades with a stagnating income: „Median income of the middle class in 2016 is about the same as in 2000“.
- micromacrofoot 5y ago
  is that really the dream? I always thought it was just having a normal job, work 9-5 and come home to house/car/family
  - mrep 5y ago
    From wikipedia [0]: "The American Dream is a national ethos of the United States, the set of ideals (democracy, rights, liberty, opportunity and equality) in which freedom includes the opportunity for prosperity and success, as well as an upward social mobility for the family and children, achieved through hard work in a society with few barriers." [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Dream https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Dream
    - micromacrofoot 5y ago
      I suppose I'm wondering if the definition of "hard work" has shifted. In the '50s and '60s was "hard work" like 60 hour weeks and "hustle economy" type of stuff? or was it just "doing a good job" 40 hours a week?
      - danaris 5y ago
        I think to some extent it's always depended on who you talked to, but "hustle culture" as we know it today definitely wasn't part of the ideal of the American Dream at any point before the '90s, at the very earliest.
      - UncleEntity 5y ago
        I’d say it was more “an honest day’s work for an honest day’s pay”.
  - LightG 5y ago
    Back in the 50's maybe! Now everyone are just 'temporarily impoverished billionaires', which is why the whole scam continues to hold itself up.
    - 5y ago
- jmyeet 5y ago
  This is propaganda based on a mix of the Protestant work ethic and stoicism in an effort to keep the populace compliant and malleable. This is why political parties are constantly in the business of creating wedge issues to distract people so they don't figure out their lot in life is determined by their material conditions.
  - salawat 5y ago
    Which is itself propaganda from other religious sects of note who got so fast and loose with doctrine they allowed salvation to become pay-to-win (indulgences), and corruption to become so endemic, even members of the faith started nailing protests to doors, or schisming due to overreach by the theocratic edifice. If uou're going to make a historical argument, please follow through.
  - caladin 5y ago
    Two back-to-back on-point comments. I appreciate you!
mensetmanusman 5y ago
This mentality of blaming the victim can muddy the waters and make it easier for criminals to get off the hook though.
- greyhair 5y ago
  Victim blaming is wrong, I agree with that completely. But a lot of 'coins' are just paper dreams, and live somewhere on the spectrum of the Nigerian Prince scam. (that, I realize, being the extreme example) I have a hard time feeling sorry for someone that wires $10,000 to a foreign country so that a wire transfer of $20,000,000 can be processed to their bank. People just don't go around handing out money. Early Bitcoin miners went through the effort of setting up mining rigs (which is no longer practical for an individual). They actually did something, and had some skin in the game. Did they hang on to those early coins until this year? I have no idea. But people that just buy into coins because OMG its the next big thing, are purely speculating, which is nothing more than a form of gambling. Do I feel sorry for people with a gambling addiction? Yes I do, and I know someone that 'retired early (35)' to play poker professionally. To much of the coin and NFT space to me smells of a combination of pyramid scheme and MLM. By its very nature it rejects regulation, it is decentralized. Which is one of the reasons, to me, that it is suspect.
  - nkingsy 5y ago
    I don’t understand your poker sentence. Playing poker professionally is not a retirement, and no one really playing poker for income is addicted, I can assure you (at least not for long). These days, playing live is the only way to get an edge (correct me? Been a while), and that would be a boring, nauseating job, right around the pay scale and routine of “club bouncer” if you’re good. I played poker for my sole income for three years after college, traveling the world playing online. It was occasionally a lot of fun, morally painful, so stressful and not very well compensated. I would be rich now if I’d gone straight into programming instead of spending my 20s “avoiding work” by working my ass off to monetize my hobbies.
    - alasdair_ 5y ago
Mvandenbergh 5y ago
The reasons this is nonsense are twofold: First, I have never actually seen any comments here disavowing themselves of responsibility. It is always aimed at protecting others and this is rooted in the obvious fact that a very large number of people are not (and we do not expect them to be) experts in investment. That assets can go up or down is one thing, and nobody can be protected from that, but there is an extensive body of law intended to protect people from outright falsehoods. So I can say, "you should invest in ConCoin, it's going to the moooon" and that maybe is allowed. I cannot say "we have pegged this to the value of the dollar if I know that I have taken no care whatsoever to even try and do that". Second, refusing to set a floor on falsehoods using regulatory tools makes doing business much more expensive for people who are not scammers. This is a classic "market for lemons" effect. If I have a great idea that I would like to raise money for using, say, a utility token [n.b. not currently allowed] then if the last few such tokens have been exit scams, I will raise no money. Maintaining a certain level of trust is a pool from which we can all draw. It has in fact been shown that growth in low trust economies is systematically lower than in high trust economies.
- bratwurst3000 5y ago
  If people cant handle the basic of investing they shouldnt do it. If its too good to be true it mostly isnt. Is it the casino foult that their customers loose money because the ambient is so inviting and screams wining?
  - dagw 5y ago
    Is it the casino foult that their customers loose money Casinos are very strictly regulated and must post the exact rules and probability of winning for all their games. If the casino lies about the rules of the game or your chances of winning, then yes it is absolutely their fault and they will be held liable.
    - bratwurst3000 5y ago
      Yes and everyone warned everyone investing in crypto that it could go from hero to zero instantly. I cant believe anyone didnt know this risk.
eli 5y ago
This is how almost every con works. The people who fall for advance check scams think they’re getting easy money and the greed clouds their judgement. It doesn’t absolve the perpetrator.
CPLX 5y ago
Our society has made a different call. We have decided that without being restricted investment cons will cause massive harm to society. We decided this because it happened over and over and over and over again.
- progrus 5y ago
  We did not decide this. You are just pretending that this has been decided the way you like. FDR is long dead.
  - jcranberry 5y ago
    Yes we did. Otherwise we wouldn't have a concept of "non-accredited investors".
    - progrus 4y ago
      ...who will instead invest their $20k life savings in beanie babies. The system is stupid, and we don’t all agree that it is the right way.
  - CPLX 5y ago
    The current existence of the SEC I believe is sufficient to reinforce my point.
equalsione 5y ago
> I actually hate people disavowing themselves of responsibility here. It's easy to say "they should have known" better because in absolutist terms it's correct. But you're focusing on the 'what' and not the 'why'. For example: https://rollcall.com/2021/09/07/left-behind-by-financial-system-minorities-turn-to-new-products/ https://rollcall.com/2021/09/07/left-behind-by-financial-sys... "Normal" investing is complicated, and stacked against regular people. Now we're asking people to understand blockchain and cryptography as well as investing. Yet it's sold as democratisation of investing. I mean, seriously.
- throw0101a 5y ago
  > "Normal" investing is complicated, and stacked against regular people. You buy a low-cost index fund (either S&P 500 or total market (Russell 3000, Wilshire 5000)), and depending on your risk tolerance, a bond fund as well. You can have global diversification with one ETF or mutual fund: * https://www.youngandthrifty.ca/picking-the-best-all-in-one-etfs-canada/ https://www.youngandthrifty.ca/picking-the-best-all-in-one-e...
  - salawat 5y ago
    Congratulations. You just delegated the choice of winners and losers in your economy to an elite cadre of individuals, completely disconnected from boots on the ground life problems. Symptoms of your decision may include: Tendency to centralize. Preferrntial treatment of large incumbents for ease of implementing regulations. Higher barriers to entry over time. Decreased feedback loop with regards to reigning in egregious business malbehavior. Index investing does nothing but perpetuate a small handful of winners, and divests the majority of people from their most important role of being capital allocators. Part of it, is being bad at it at some point. That's how you get better and increase overall world awareness.
- unmole 5y ago
  > "Normal" investing is complicated, Buy a broad based, low cost index fund. What exactly is complicated about that? > and stacked against regular people. How so?
seanhunter 5y ago
> I actually hate people disavowing themselves of responsibility here. I believe that everyone should do their own research etc but there's a reason there are laws against fraud. There are a lot of people who would get taken advantage of by the unscrupulous if we just decided that it's all about personal responsibility. Yes people should not have the expectation that they will get rich quick but there is also no reason to allow them to be blatantly ripped off either. If tether haven't maintained the level of reserves they need to maintain the peg (and honestly I can't see how the possibly could have adequate reserves) then it seems a pretty straightforward case of fraud.
- FireBeyond 5y ago
  > and honestly I can't see how the possibly could have adequate reserves Not even close, even now. And the earlier stuff was almost insulting. Like the claim in 2019 that they were depositing $3.5 BILLION, per WEEK, into a bank, a deposit rate that would exceed AT&T, Samsung, Alphabet (Google). Hah. No. The bank "deputy CEO" (who was 33) in an interview noted that the Bahamas had two banking licenses. But couldn't name them. And in any case, wasn't sure which his bank had, but he knew they had one of them. "And possibly the other".
gilbetron 5y ago
> (particularly NFTs, which seem to be 99% scams) What is the 1% you think aren't scams?
- Tao332 5y ago
  I guess it's like the 99.999% label effectiveness of hand sanitizer. We all know it's really 100%, but the best we can say is "we see no evidence of one that's not a scam". Or perhaps every single one has a core of 1% sincere intention at its heart. After all, you can rather confidently say you have a receipt.
- DebtDeflation 5y ago
  >What is the 1% you think aren't scams? Money laundering. The one use case where NFTs are actually effective.
- freeone3000 5y ago
  I bought an NFT of the Brooklyn Bridge, and I am very happy with my purchase.
MomoXenosaga 5y ago
I don't know man casinos have a legal duty to cut off compulsive gamblers. At least in my country. Which leads me to an idea: classify crypto as a casino.
dematz 5y ago
Matt Levine seems pretty popular here and his dumb investment certificate idea, while ofc a joke, expresses the sentiment that maybe it's not possible to regulate everything but some investments (eg nfts) are transparently dumb and if you lose your money on them it's annoying to complain like "how was I, a simple dentist, supposed to know I'd get swindled?!": 1. Anyone can invest all they want in a diversified portfolio of approved investments (non-penny-stock public companies, mutual funds and exchange-traded funds with modest fees, insured bank accounts, etc.). 2. Anyone can also invest in any other dumb investment; you just have to go to the local office of the SEC and get a Certificate of Dumb Investment. (Anyone who sells dumb non-approved investments without requiring this certificate from buyers goes to prison.) 3. To get that certificate, you sign a form. The form is one page with a lot of white space. It says in very large letters: “I want to buy a dumb investment. I understand that the person selling it will almost certainly steal all my money, and that I would almost certainly be better off just buying index funds, but I want to do this dumb thing anyway. I agree that I will never, under any circumstances, complain to anyone when this investment inevitably goes wrong. I understand that violating this agreement is a felony.” 4. Then you take the form to an SEC employee, who slaps you hard across the face and says “really???” And if you reply “yes really” then she gives you the certificate. 5. Then you bring the certificate to the seller and you can buy whatever dumb thing he is selling. 6. If an article ever appears in the Wall Street Journal in which you (or your lawyer) are quoted saying that you were just a simple dentist, didn’t understand what you were buying and were swindled by the seller’s flashy sales pitch, then you go to prison.
waylandsmithers 5y ago
> People saw the meteoric rise of Bitcoin and got a serious case of FOMO. Something about the chance of life changing returns in intoxicating. Personally I'd be thrilled with a 20% annual return in "normal" investments, but somehow crypto doubling or even tripling in a year is boring because we're all after the 100x+ return. Maybe it's because psychologically it just feels like more of a lottery ticket. I have a relative in wealth management and went through a period where clients asked about bitcoin frequently. He told me his rule of thumb is: "If you've heard of it, it's probably already too late."
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
rmbyrro 5y ago
> This, ultimately, is the American Dream: to get rich by doing nothing other than getting lucky and being able to say how smart you are AFAIK, the original American Dream was getting rich through smart work and entrepreneurship. Not winning the lottery.
someguydave 5y ago
>People should be honest and admit (at least to themselves) that they didn't understand what they were investing in let alone believe in it fundamentally But only bitcoin bidders need to admit that they love lording their “smarts” over others? Seems like you are doing it yourself.
wing-_-nuts 5y ago
>This, ultimately, is the American Dream: to get rich by doing nothing other than getting lucky and being able to say how smart you are. Not by creating any kind of value. Holy projection batman. I agree that much of crypto is rampant speculation, but pretty much all of the legitimate uses of crypto is done in stable coins. People don't have money sitting in tether because they wanted to get rich.
- cormacrelf 5y ago
  Not least because stablecoins were meant to be the place to park your money without being subject to the huge +/- swings or risks of almost any other asset. If people are suffering, it’s because they believed the operators of stablecoins when they said funds were in the safest place going. And now look at today: Tether says it is honouring all redemptions as usual — which, as usual, means only redemptions over $100K are honoured. The small fish can go cry, apparently, or try an exchange at the market price whose detachment from $1 is the whole reason for a run on Tether. Take the concept of FDIC insured bank deposits, turn it completely on its head, and that’s what this policy is.
HWR_14 5y ago
I assume that based on this, you oppose the legal consequences that Elizabeth Smart is facing, and think it's 100% the investor's fault they wrote checks to Theranos.
JumpCrisscross 5y ago
Totally agree. We have a regulated financial system. Jumping out and then asking for a public bailout is ridiculous. Those injured should absolutely sue the promoters who encouraged them. But I am strongly against engaging public resources to prosecute.
diob 5y ago
I think you're overestimating humanity here. There's a reason gambling is typically so controlled / limited. Have some empathy for those who might be a little less "smart" than yourself, ultimately we're just fancy animals.

by jmyeet 5y ago

raiyu 5y ago

The American dream is to make it through hard work, what you are referring to is simple greed and laziness and it’s been around since humanity attained consciousness.

sbarre 5y ago
> The American dream is to make it through hard work Now that's the actual con, or at least a pipe dream. Hard work is never enough. Luck plays a huge factor but few who get lucky, and then rich, will ever admit to that part.
- fifticon 5y ago
  It's a minor detail: "through the hard work of OTHERS".
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- bitexploder 5y ago
  I admit it. Many of my peers do. Luck is fickle and hard quantify. Effort and decision making less so. It is at least obvious why people have such a bias.
  - sbarre 5y ago
    Of course, saying "I got lucky" is not the story most successful people want to tell themselves.. I am not implying it is all luck, but there is never no luck involved in success.
- marcusverus 5y ago
  > Now that's the actual con, or at least a pipe dream. Hard work is never enough. This seems like a bad faith, intentional misunderstanding of the concept of hard work. You're right, mindless hard work (with no proactive consideration for your own life trajectory) is not enough to "make it". If you take the first minimum wage job you find and you work hard at that job for 40 years, you're not going to make it. That doesn't invalidate the American Dream. The American Dream isn't "if you work hard, the American Dream fairy will appear and present you with a house, a car and a white picket fence", it's "if you work hard at making it, you can quite easily make it". This presupposes that a given worker will take responsibility for their ability to earn, and be willing to course correct if they are not on a good path toward "making it". > Luck plays a huge factor but few who get lucky, and then rich, will ever admit to that part. Nonsense. The goal of the American Dream was never to be Jeff Bezos. It was to live a comfortable life. In that sense, the American Dream is being realized by the vast majority of Americans every day. The median income of a middle-class household in this country is 78K,[0] which puts them in the ~94th percentile in global income.[1] [0]https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/09/06/the-american-middle-class-is-stable-in-size-but-losing-ground-financially-to-upper-income-families/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/09/06/the-america... [1]https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2018/business/global-income-calculator/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2018/business/global...
  - heisenbit 5y ago
    The Pew Research article you are quoting show a considerably shrinking middle class over the past decades with a stagnating income: „Median income of the middle class in 2016 is about the same as in 2000“.
micromacrofoot 5y ago
is that really the dream? I always thought it was just having a normal job, work 9-5 and come home to house/car/family
- mrep 5y ago
  From wikipedia [0]: "The American Dream is a national ethos of the United States, the set of ideals (democracy, rights, liberty, opportunity and equality) in which freedom includes the opportunity for prosperity and success, as well as an upward social mobility for the family and children, achieved through hard work in a society with few barriers." [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Dream https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Dream
  - micromacrofoot 5y ago
    I suppose I'm wondering if the definition of "hard work" has shifted. In the '50s and '60s was "hard work" like 60 hour weeks and "hustle economy" type of stuff? or was it just "doing a good job" 40 hours a week?
    - danaris 5y ago
      I think to some extent it's always depended on who you talked to, but "hustle culture" as we know it today definitely wasn't part of the ideal of the American Dream at any point before the '90s, at the very earliest.
    - UncleEntity 5y ago
      I’d say it was more “an honest day’s work for an honest day’s pay”.
- LightG 5y ago
  Back in the 50's maybe! Now everyone are just 'temporarily impoverished billionaires', which is why the whole scam continues to hold itself up.
  - 5y ago
jmyeet 5y ago
This is propaganda based on a mix of the Protestant work ethic and stoicism in an effort to keep the populace compliant and malleable. This is why political parties are constantly in the business of creating wedge issues to distract people so they don't figure out their lot in life is determined by their material conditions.
- salawat 5y ago
  Which is itself propaganda from other religious sects of note who got so fast and loose with doctrine they allowed salvation to become pay-to-win (indulgences), and corruption to become so endemic, even members of the faith started nailing protests to doors, or schisming due to overreach by the theocratic edifice. If uou're going to make a historical argument, please follow through.
- caladin 5y ago
  Two back-to-back on-point comments. I appreciate you!

mensetmanusman 5y ago

This mentality of blaming the victim can muddy the waters and make it easier for criminals to get off the hook though.

greyhair 5y ago
Victim blaming is wrong, I agree with that completely. But a lot of 'coins' are just paper dreams, and live somewhere on the spectrum of the Nigerian Prince scam. (that, I realize, being the extreme example) I have a hard time feeling sorry for someone that wires $10,000 to a foreign country so that a wire transfer of $20,000,000 can be processed to their bank. People just don't go around handing out money. Early Bitcoin miners went through the effort of setting up mining rigs (which is no longer practical for an individual). They actually did something, and had some skin in the game. Did they hang on to those early coins until this year? I have no idea. But people that just buy into coins because OMG its the next big thing, are purely speculating, which is nothing more than a form of gambling. Do I feel sorry for people with a gambling addiction? Yes I do, and I know someone that 'retired early (35)' to play poker professionally. To much of the coin and NFT space to me smells of a combination of pyramid scheme and MLM. By its very nature it rejects regulation, it is decentralized. Which is one of the reasons, to me, that it is suspect.
- nkingsy 5y ago
  I don’t understand your poker sentence. Playing poker professionally is not a retirement, and no one really playing poker for income is addicted, I can assure you (at least not for long). These days, playing live is the only way to get an edge (correct me? Been a while), and that would be a boring, nauseating job, right around the pay scale and routine of “club bouncer” if you’re good. I played poker for my sole income for three years after college, traveling the world playing online. It was occasionally a lot of fun, morally painful, so stressful and not very well compensated. I would be rich now if I’d gone straight into programming instead of spending my 20s “avoiding work” by working my ass off to monetize my hobbies.
  - alasdair_ 5y ago

Mvandenbergh 5y ago

The reasons this is nonsense are twofold: First, I have never actually seen any comments here disavowing themselves of responsibility. It is always aimed at protecting others and this is rooted in the obvious fact that a very large number of people are not (and we do not expect them to be) experts in investment. That assets can go up or down is one thing, and nobody can be protected from that, but there is an extensive body of law intended to protect people from outright falsehoods. So I can say, "you should invest in ConCoin, it's going to the moooon" and that maybe is allowed. I cannot say "we have pegged this to the value of the dollar if I know that I have taken no care whatsoever to even try and do that". Second, refusing to set a floor on falsehoods using regulatory tools makes doing business much more expensive for people who are not scammers. This is a classic "market for lemons" effect. If I have a great idea that I would like to raise money for using, say, a utility token [n.b. not currently allowed] then if the last few such tokens have been exit scams, I will raise no money. Maintaining a certain level of trust is a pool from which we can all draw. It has in fact been shown that growth in low trust economies is systematically lower than in high trust economies.

bratwurst3000 5y ago
If people cant handle the basic of investing they shouldnt do it. If its too good to be true it mostly isnt. Is it the casino foult that their customers loose money because the ambient is so inviting and screams wining?
- dagw 5y ago
  Is it the casino foult that their customers loose money Casinos are very strictly regulated and must post the exact rules and probability of winning for all their games. If the casino lies about the rules of the game or your chances of winning, then yes it is absolutely their fault and they will be held liable.
  - bratwurst3000 5y ago
    Yes and everyone warned everyone investing in crypto that it could go from hero to zero instantly. I cant believe anyone didnt know this risk.

eli 5y ago

This is how almost every con works. The people who fall for advance check scams think they’re getting easy money and the greed clouds their judgement. It doesn’t absolve the perpetrator.

CPLX 5y ago

Our society has made a different call. We have decided that without being restricted investment cons will cause massive harm to society. We decided this because it happened over and over and over and over again.

progrus 5y ago
We did not decide this. You are just pretending that this has been decided the way you like. FDR is long dead.
- jcranberry 5y ago
  Yes we did. Otherwise we wouldn't have a concept of "non-accredited investors".
  - progrus 4y ago
    ...who will instead invest their $20k life savings in beanie babies. The system is stupid, and we don’t all agree that it is the right way.
- CPLX 5y ago
  The current existence of the SEC I believe is sufficient to reinforce my point.

equalsione 5y ago

> I actually hate people disavowing themselves of responsibility here. It's easy to say "they should have known" better because in absolutist terms it's correct. But you're focusing on the 'what' and not the 'why'. For example: https://rollcall.com/2021/09/07/left-behind-by-financial-system-minorities-turn-to-new-products/ https://rollcall.com/2021/09/07/left-behind-by-financial-sys... "Normal" investing is complicated, and stacked against regular people. Now we're asking people to understand blockchain and cryptography as well as investing. Yet it's sold as democratisation of investing. I mean, seriously.

throw0101a 5y ago
> "Normal" investing is complicated, and stacked against regular people. You buy a low-cost index fund (either S&P 500 or total market (Russell 3000, Wilshire 5000)), and depending on your risk tolerance, a bond fund as well. You can have global diversification with one ETF or mutual fund: * https://www.youngandthrifty.ca/picking-the-best-all-in-one-etfs-canada/ https://www.youngandthrifty.ca/picking-the-best-all-in-one-e...
- salawat 5y ago
  Congratulations. You just delegated the choice of winners and losers in your economy to an elite cadre of individuals, completely disconnected from boots on the ground life problems. Symptoms of your decision may include: Tendency to centralize. Preferrntial treatment of large incumbents for ease of implementing regulations. Higher barriers to entry over time. Decreased feedback loop with regards to reigning in egregious business malbehavior. Index investing does nothing but perpetuate a small handful of winners, and divests the majority of people from their most important role of being capital allocators. Part of it, is being bad at it at some point. That's how you get better and increase overall world awareness.
unmole 5y ago
> "Normal" investing is complicated, Buy a broad based, low cost index fund. What exactly is complicated about that? > and stacked against regular people. How so?

seanhunter 5y ago

> I actually hate people disavowing themselves of responsibility here. I believe that everyone should do their own research etc but there's a reason there are laws against fraud. There are a lot of people who would get taken advantage of by the unscrupulous if we just decided that it's all about personal responsibility. Yes people should not have the expectation that they will get rich quick but there is also no reason to allow them to be blatantly ripped off either. If tether haven't maintained the level of reserves they need to maintain the peg (and honestly I can't see how the possibly could have adequate reserves) then it seems a pretty straightforward case of fraud.

FireBeyond 5y ago
> and honestly I can't see how the possibly could have adequate reserves Not even close, even now. And the earlier stuff was almost insulting. Like the claim in 2019 that they were depositing $3.5 BILLION, per WEEK, into a bank, a deposit rate that would exceed AT&T, Samsung, Alphabet (Google). Hah. No. The bank "deputy CEO" (who was 33) in an interview noted that the Bahamas had two banking licenses. But couldn't name them. And in any case, wasn't sure which his bank had, but he knew they had one of them. "And possibly the other".

gilbetron 5y ago

> (particularly NFTs, which seem to be 99% scams) What is the 1% you think aren't scams?

Tao332 5y ago
I guess it's like the 99.999% label effectiveness of hand sanitizer. We all know it's really 100%, but the best we can say is "we see no evidence of one that's not a scam". Or perhaps every single one has a core of 1% sincere intention at its heart. After all, you can rather confidently say you have a receipt.
DebtDeflation 5y ago
>What is the 1% you think aren't scams? Money laundering. The one use case where NFTs are actually effective.
freeone3000 5y ago
I bought an NFT of the Brooklyn Bridge, and I am very happy with my purchase.

MomoXenosaga 5y ago

I don't know man casinos have a legal duty to cut off compulsive gamblers. At least in my country. Which leads me to an idea: classify crypto as a casino.

dematz 5y ago

Matt Levine seems pretty popular here and his dumb investment certificate idea, while ofc a joke, expresses the sentiment that maybe it's not possible to regulate everything but some investments (eg nfts) are transparently dumb and if you lose your money on them it's annoying to complain like "how was I, a simple dentist, supposed to know I'd get swindled?!": 1. Anyone can invest all they want in a diversified portfolio of approved investments (non-penny-stock public companies, mutual funds and exchange-traded funds with modest fees, insured bank accounts, etc.). 2. Anyone can also invest in any other dumb investment; you just have to go to the local office of the SEC and get a Certificate of Dumb Investment. (Anyone who sells dumb non-approved investments without requiring this certificate from buyers goes to prison.) 3. To get that certificate, you sign a form. The form is one page with a lot of white space. It says in very large letters: “I want to buy a dumb investment. I understand that the person selling it will almost certainly steal all my money, and that I would almost certainly be better off just buying index funds, but I want to do this dumb thing anyway. I agree that I will never, under any circumstances, complain to anyone when this investment inevitably goes wrong. I understand that violating this agreement is a felony.” 4. Then you take the form to an SEC employee, who slaps you hard across the face and says “really???” And if you reply “yes really” then she gives you the certificate. 5. Then you bring the certificate to the seller and you can buy whatever dumb thing he is selling. 6. If an article ever appears in the Wall Street Journal in which you (or your lawyer) are quoted saying that you were just a simple dentist, didn’t understand what you were buying and were swindled by the seller’s flashy sales pitch, then you go to prison.

waylandsmithers 5y ago

> People saw the meteoric rise of Bitcoin and got a serious case of FOMO. Something about the chance of life changing returns in intoxicating. Personally I'd be thrilled with a 20% annual return in "normal" investments, but somehow crypto doubling or even tripling in a year is boring because we're all after the 100x+ return. Maybe it's because psychologically it just feels like more of a lottery ticket. I have a relative in wealth management and went through a period where clients asked about bitcoin frequently. He told me his rule of thumb is: "If you've heard of it, it's probably already too late."

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rmbyrro 5y ago

> This, ultimately, is the American Dream: to get rich by doing nothing other than getting lucky and being able to say how smart you are AFAIK, the original American Dream was getting rich through smart work and entrepreneurship. Not winning the lottery.

someguydave 5y ago

>People should be honest and admit (at least to themselves) that they didn't understand what they were investing in let alone believe in it fundamentally But only bitcoin bidders need to admit that they love lording their “smarts” over others? Seems like you are doing it yourself.

wing-_-nuts 5y ago

>This, ultimately, is the American Dream: to get rich by doing nothing other than getting lucky and being able to say how smart you are. Not by creating any kind of value. Holy projection batman. I agree that much of crypto is rampant speculation, but pretty much all of the legitimate uses of crypto is done in stable coins. People don't have money sitting in tether because they wanted to get rich.

cormacrelf 5y ago
Not least because stablecoins were meant to be the place to park your money without being subject to the huge +/- swings or risks of almost any other asset. If people are suffering, it’s because they believed the operators of stablecoins when they said funds were in the safest place going. And now look at today: Tether says it is honouring all redemptions as usual — which, as usual, means only redemptions over $100K are honoured. The small fish can go cry, apparently, or try an exchange at the market price whose detachment from $1 is the whole reason for a run on Tether. Take the concept of FDIC insured bank deposits, turn it completely on its head, and that’s what this policy is.

HWR_14 5y ago

I assume that based on this, you oppose the legal consequences that Elizabeth Smart is facing, and think it's 100% the investor's fault they wrote checks to Theranos.

JumpCrisscross 5y ago

Totally agree. We have a regulated financial system. Jumping out and then asking for a public bailout is ridiculous. Those injured should absolutely sue the promoters who encouraged them. But I am strongly against engaging public resources to prosecute.

diob 5y ago

I think you're overestimating humanity here. There's a reason gambling is typically so controlled / limited. Have some empathy for those who might be a little less "smart" than yourself, ultimately we're just fancy animals.