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That was sort of my reaction to: "why yes, of course this unregulated market has bad actors ripping off other people". But consider the WSJ audience and the way

That was sort of my reaction to: "why yes, of course this unregulated market has bad actors ripping off other people". But consider the WSJ audience and the way cryptocurrency is increasingly being peddled as a legitimate investment. Insider trading steals money from end retail investors and gives it to powerful insiders. It is actively harmful to ordinary investors. Ultimately markets that tolerate this kind of fraud fail as people get mad about being the sucker who gets ripped off and refuse to participate. Compared to the other kinds of fraud endemic to cryptocurrency, the risk of a corrupt market is a slow burn. Probably the Ponzi scheme will collapse or the rug will be pulled or the contract will be hacked long before the sheep realize they are being fleeced by insiders.

ineedasername 4y ago
That's a good point. Those following from a crypto disaster journalism vantage point will view this story as "yes, and water has been know to be wet on occasion, and the sun to come up on quite possibly every day." But if your exposure is more from following tradition financi news, you may have seen some of the disasters and certainly volatility but otherwise may seem like a gradually emerging but not quite mature new asset class.
Handytinge 4y ago
> But consider the WSJ audience and the way cryptocurrency is increasingly being peddled as a legitimate investment. If this audience doesn't understand what they're investing in and the rules around it, they're not very good investors, are they?