3 ms·

Facilitating access to various investment options, including direct speculation, is what stockbrokers do. Why is your grief falling specifically on the Coinbase

by ptero 4y ago

Facilitating access to various investment options, including direct speculation, is what stockbrokers do. Why is your grief falling specifically on the Coinbase? For example, in my Fidelity account I can, if I am so inclined, day trade GBTC, buy low volume penny stocks of sketchy miners and do a lot of other things that are not recommended by the mainstream financial analysts.

chinathrow 4y ago
> Why is your grief falling specifically on the Coinbase There is simply no underlying value within any of these coins. Why would a sane person invest in them? With regular stocks, you have at least some sort of insight on how an underlying is performing.
- dewey 4y ago
  There's many regular investment vehicles that you can invest in where this also applies. This is not a crypto or Coinbase problem.
- ezfe 4y ago
  So do you think that everyone should remove gamestop from stock brokers? It's not connected to the underlying business performance.
- SamReidHughes 4y ago
  Brokers also let you trade foreign currencies and metals.
- ptero 4y ago
  > There is simply no underlying value within any of these coins. Why would a sane person invest in them? I remember hearing the same arguments against Ebay and other e-commerce companies: this is all vaporware, there is no physical value (meaning bricks and mortar storefronts), we should prohibit people from investing in all of those, etc. I personally would not touch most cryptos with a 6' pole, but that is just my opinion. We should still allow someone who believes in this space to invest their own money the way they see fit. My 2c.
  - wpietri 4y ago
    Nah. The average person was and should have been prevented from investing in Ebay until they were a publicly traded company, which required Ebay execs to share with the public enough information to have a hope of correctly valuing the investment. Even if you don't care at all about individuals getting fleeced by scammers, there's a societal reason. We need investment capital for growth, and we need it to be reasonably sanely allocated. If some people raising capital can lie and others have to tell the truth, that puts truth-tellers at a structural disadvantage, meaning more money for fraud, less money for good investments, and a strong incentive for everybody to lie in equal amounts just to keep up. Worse, over the long term, markets with high levels of scamming mean that most people learn to stay out of them entirely. This leads to even less capital for good investments plus society-wide misallocation of capital. E.g., people just keeping money in their mattresses. So long-term economic growth is harmed for a generation or two. Because even if you clean up a market so it is safe, it takes a long while for people to forget previous pain. So as a society, we want what America had for decades: strongly regulated financial markets so that the average joe has a variety of safe investment options. For the few who really want to invest in the risky stuff, they can go out and get a Series 65 exam to prove they know what they're doing. [1] [1] Process described here: https://www.natecation.com/accredited-investor-investing-startups-series-65/ https://www.natecation.com/accredited-investor-investing-sta...
    - ptero 4y ago
      For tax or other community money pots, sure. For my own -- thanks, but no thanks. I will spend it however I like.
      - wpietri 4y ago
        I don't get the sense that you read what I wrote. Tax money pots are less worrying to me because the information/skill asymmetries are lower. In any case, in the US it's still illegal for most investments to take money from non-accredited investors. So yes, this includes your money.
        4y ago

by ptero 4y ago

chinathrow 4y ago

> Why is your grief falling specifically on the Coinbase There is simply no underlying value within any of these coins. Why would a sane person invest in them? With regular stocks, you have at least some sort of insight on how an underlying is performing.

dewey 4y ago
There's many regular investment vehicles that you can invest in where this also applies. This is not a crypto or Coinbase problem.
ezfe 4y ago
So do you think that everyone should remove gamestop from stock brokers? It's not connected to the underlying business performance.
SamReidHughes 4y ago
Brokers also let you trade foreign currencies and metals.
ptero 4y ago
> There is simply no underlying value within any of these coins. Why would a sane person invest in them? I remember hearing the same arguments against Ebay and other e-commerce companies: this is all vaporware, there is no physical value (meaning bricks and mortar storefronts), we should prohibit people from investing in all of those, etc. I personally would not touch most cryptos with a 6' pole, but that is just my opinion. We should still allow someone who believes in this space to invest their own money the way they see fit. My 2c.
- wpietri 4y ago
  Nah. The average person was and should have been prevented from investing in Ebay until they were a publicly traded company, which required Ebay execs to share with the public enough information to have a hope of correctly valuing the investment. Even if you don't care at all about individuals getting fleeced by scammers, there's a societal reason. We need investment capital for growth, and we need it to be reasonably sanely allocated. If some people raising capital can lie and others have to tell the truth, that puts truth-tellers at a structural disadvantage, meaning more money for fraud, less money for good investments, and a strong incentive for everybody to lie in equal amounts just to keep up. Worse, over the long term, markets with high levels of scamming mean that most people learn to stay out of them entirely. This leads to even less capital for good investments plus society-wide misallocation of capital. E.g., people just keeping money in their mattresses. So long-term economic growth is harmed for a generation or two. Because even if you clean up a market so it is safe, it takes a long while for people to forget previous pain. So as a society, we want what America had for decades: strongly regulated financial markets so that the average joe has a variety of safe investment options. For the few who really want to invest in the risky stuff, they can go out and get a Series 65 exam to prove they know what they're doing. [1] [1] Process described here: https://www.natecation.com/accredited-investor-investing-startups-series-65/ https://www.natecation.com/accredited-investor-investing-sta...
  - ptero 4y ago
    For tax or other community money pots, sure. For my own -- thanks, but no thanks. I will spend it however I like.
    - wpietri 4y ago
      I don't get the sense that you read what I wrote. Tax money pots are less worrying to me because the information/skill asymmetries are lower. In any case, in the US it's still illegal for most investments to take money from non-accredited investors. So yes, this includes your money.
      - 4y ago