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But...they shouldn't have invested more than they could afford to lose. This article gives no reasons why the author's thesis should be true, besides people bei

But...they shouldn't have invested more than they could afford to lose. This article gives no reasons why the author's thesis should be true, besides people being desperate. > So “don’t invest more than you can afford to lose” is tough advice to swallow for the large group of people who are seeing the gleaming promises around crypto, but who also don’t _have_ money they can afford to lose. So if they don't have money, then they shouldn't invest it in speculative investments like crypto. > It’s apparently easy for people to castigate those who’ve just lost everything by repeating this refrain, in the same way it seems to be easy for people to only start pointing out the “obvious Ponzi” or “clear scam” projects only after everything crumbles. No, people have been saying since the beginning that crypto is a scam, not after these scams happen. And even if it were after scams happening, there have been so many [0] that surely people would understand that future scams are likely. Honestly, I have no sympathy for these people. If they want to be greedy and commit millions of dollars into these scams ([1] which the author hyperlinks to) then that's on them. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes, isn't that how the saying goes? [0] https://web3isgoinggreat.com/ https://web3isgoinggreat.com/ [1] https://old.reddit.com/r/Invest_Voyager/comments/vsj9nx/how_much_crypto_usd_did_you_have_on_voyager_ill/ https://old.reddit.com/r/Invest_Voyager/comments/vsj9nx/how_...

wmf 4y ago
I think Molly kinda buried the lede here which is that crypto companies and influencers explicitly encouraged people to invest money they could not afford to lose. The crypto "community" need to own up to this.
- dadoge 4y ago
  That is true, esp with Michael Saylors comment about mortgage your house to buy buy BTC…I am pro BTC, but that is utterly horrible advice. That is indeed buried relative to many other points
  - hammyhavoc 4y ago
    Yep. Know an elderly couple that did exactly this, and so did their friends. It is shockingly common. They were all exploited. Someone should be held accountable.
    - bagacrap 4y ago
      ...really? what were they hoping to gain? By the time you're elderly I feel like you should understand that there's no such thing as low risk high reward investing.
      - hammyhavoc 4y ago
        To beat inflation. Simple as that. Interest rates aren't moving in line with the rate of inflation, ergo running out of money before they croak becomes something to be concerned by, thus most folks make investments in retirement to compensate for this. Lots of folks online saying that crypto is the only way to beat inflation. We both know that's bullshit, but with so many people huffing the laughing gas, it's easy to get taken in, especially with influencers and the Crypto.com Stadium et al.
        dehrmann 4y ago
        I like this thought and buy the motivation, but why not stocks?
        hammyhavoc 4y ago
        Stocks aren't anywhere near as hyped, and countries aren't making stocks into legal tender ala Bitcoin, and Chivo. Not that I'm advocating for any of this BTW. It just seems like a perfect storm of massive hype, a lot of very convincing marketing, and the wind blowing in the right direction between a pandemic, Brexit, war, and a possible recession. When desperate, and many big names are involved, it can obviously look quite seductive. Used to work in this predatory niche about 7 years ago. Never again.
      - PuppyTailWags 4y ago
  - foogazi 4y ago
    But are you owning up to this ?
    - dadoge 4y ago
      What do you mean?
      - foogazi 4y ago
        GP wmf stated: > The crypto "community" need to own up to this. Whatever that means
- nharada 4y ago
  Yes. Saying "don't invest more than you can afford to lose" while building an entire industry around convincing people to do exactly that is allowing these people to absolve themselves of responsibility by pointing out they offered a disclaimer at the start. It also fits in well with the generally libertarian nature of the crypto culture, allowing blame to lie with "personal responsibility" rather than grifting or scamming. It's like when the tobacco industry sponsored ads to "prevent kids from smoking" while investing millions in targeting them anyway.
  - oarabbus_ 4y ago
    How is this different than trading equities on the stock market (a decidedly non-libertarian culture)? Stock brokerages provide the exact same disclaimers - equities are inherently high-risk assets in which you can lose everything you've put in.
    - nharada 4y ago
      I actually think the stock brokerages have done a similar thing -- it used to be that sophisticated and risky products like high leverage options were not available to retail traders who didn't have the money to lose, but with the rise of meme stocks and Robinhood things have changed. I'm not saying I think that's okay either. And look, I'm not defending the current banking system. Should average people have no options while the wealthy can use complex derivatives to increase their wealth and power? Probably not. I'm just pointing out that the crypto world shouldn't be doing this specific thing.
      - oarabbus_ 4y ago
        I agree that brokerages have done similar lately, with massive ad campaigns targeting retail traders, gamifying their apps, and generally obfuscating the risks involved to less-informed individuals. And as you mention in the second part, it is a very difficult and tricky balance between protecting retail traders while preventing them access to instruments that the wealthy can use to further increase wealth. As an example, it used to be that USA-based customers could leverage trade (short trade or margin leverage long trade) on crypto exchanges, for example Kraken. However, due to regulatory pressure, Kraken now requires registering as an Eligible Contract Participant in order to margin/leverage trade - the key requirement being proof of $10M in discretionary assets. On one hand, this is probably a net "good" - short trading or leveraged long trades are _extremely_ risky, with the former having infinite loss potential and the latter resulting in margin calls or a greater loss than the account is worth (i.e. you're in debt to the exchange). I have little doubt that retail traders would've lost more money were this restriction not in place. On the other hand, this reeks of "you must be this rich to enter; peons need not apply". A wealthy person can 66
- superchroma 4y ago
  Also worth noting that ordinary investors were cheated by proxy through no effort of their own as the firms investing their money have taken crypto on to their investment portfolios.
- sobkas 4y ago
  If you believe entities* on the internet to do anything(that includes investment) you have bigger problem than some random crypto investments. A lot of parts of internet looks safe, but it's always one step away from a hack, so don't overestimate it safety. Also people lie to get your money, that includes "celebrities" and companies. *Most of the time you don't have idea if you talk to(or receive information from) real person, some hacker who hijacked their account, a program pretending to be a human(from emacs doctor to gpt3 and beyond), etc.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- yucky 4y ago
  Personal responsibility is a thing. Where does this idea that everyone must be protected from themselves come from? More importantly, where does it end? Should your barber be held accountable for providing a bad stock tip too?
  - jollybean 4y ago
    Yes, but accountability for spreading false information is a thing as well. What if someone says to take some drug 'because it's safe' - when it's not? I say let the lawsuits begin. Or better yet, have some kind of basic regs. Whenever anyone talks about 'health' or 'finance' in the commons, they had better be very clearly indicating that 'they don't know what the F they are talking about' and that people ought to 'talk to a doctor/accredited financial advisor' first and that 'following this advice could lead to illness/bankruptcy' etc.. I would love to see theses turds have to follow the same regs drug companies do: "This diarrhea medicine may cause X, Y, Z and A, B, C etc."
    - yucky 4y ago
      >What if someone says to take some drug 'because it's safe' - when it's not? Well it depends on who it is (which goes back to personal responsibility). If I'm taking drugs that my barber recommended I deserve the same fate as if I buy the stocks or crypto he recommended.
      - jollybean 4y ago
        Yes, but some people present themselves as being credible. Authors, bloggers, etc. make it their professional interest to give such advice. The guy saying 'sell your home to buy BTC' is one such person. We need credible groups and institutions.
        yucky 4y ago
        How does that work though? Does the government need to regulate what we can talk about? Who determines who is "Credible"? >The guy saying 'sell your home to buy BTC' is one such person. Almost nobody did that though. Which means 99.99999999% of people saw that to be bad advice and acted accordingly. For the handful who decided it was a great idea, that's on them. We don't need to regulate the speech of everyone to protect the biggest idiots from themselves.
- caeril 4y ago
  > crypto companies and influencers explicitly encouraged This wasn't Jim Cramer or some vetted CNBC talking head talking P/E ratios or future earnings potential. These are carefully-engineered social media accounts with follower counts blown up by obvious market-engineering campaigns. Again, to OP's point, if you're putting your life savings into speculative investment X, from the word of a rando instagram "influencer", you get what you deserve. Anybody in 2022 who doesn't understand that most social media presences are carefully curated, engineered, and biased, is a fool. Live or die by the word of the shoeshine boy, it's a tale as old as time. We all learned of 1637 and 1929 in high school history. If you didn't pay attention, that's on you.
ourmandave 4y ago
I have sympathy for all of them. Like the article says, some were greedy but all were lied to. The only thing they have left is a hard lesson learned. On the flip side, the frauds, criminals, and liars that run the entire crypto circus can all die in a fire.
- 988747 4y ago
  Some lies are so obvious that if you believe them you are at fault. Nigerian prince wants to send you 10 million dollars, but doesn't have the funds to cover wire transfer fee? Someone promises you to double your within a month with crypto? If you believe in any of those then you're clearly incapable of making your own life decisions, and your money will be put to much better use by the scammer who tricked you than by yourself.
  - ourmandave 4y ago
    If you believe in any of those then you're clearly incapable of making your own life decisions, and your money will be put to much better use by the scammer who tricked you than by yourself. And yet here we are with a bunch of people who were wiped the fuck out by promises the crypto ponzi scheme Voyager deposits were FDIC insured. Except customer's funds were considered loans to Voyager and it was Voyager's deposits that were protected, not their victims. But I'm sure the criminals running Voyager are spending the money much more wisely than some grandma on a pension ever could.
    - 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
      > Voyager deposits were FDIC insured. They were? Then everybody will be compensated.
      - olliej 4y ago
        Dude read, I get that you think the victims deserve to lose their savings because of course the dominant financial news for the last few years with no fraud charges was clearly a scam, right? The voyager victims were repeatedly and explicitly told that their deposits were FDIC insured - they were literally doing the “right” thing and putting their money in a safe high[er] interest rate bank, and their money was insured if the company did collapse. Except they were being lied to the entire time, and there was no such insurance, so all their “safe” savings are now gone, while the owners of the fund are rich. But yeah, it was clearly the victims fault.
hammyhavoc 4y ago
You say all this, but I know a disabled elderly couple who bought into it based on the hype and advice of people around them. Needless to say, all of them lost their money. Not everybody wants a "get rich quick" scheme, a decent chunk of folks just want to beat inflation and make sure they can afford to stay retired in their old age. With how people were talking about crypto up until recently, you would think it was "better than gold" or "better than stocks" or "better than forex". Those were repeated commonly by many people who were in no position to be offering any kind of financial advice. Look at all the celebrities that got on board with pumping tokens. Look at the Staples Center being renamed as the Crypto.com Stadium. Look at world governments mulling over CDBCs. Look at El Salvador with Bitcoin and Chivo. I'm not saying "crypto good, you are wrong", I am completely anti-cryptocurrency in its current form, there isn't one viable use for it, and that's without even getting into throughput speeds, scaling issues, or energy consumption. I am however saying that victim shaming is shady.
- oneoff786 4y ago
  If they just wanted stability they should not have mortgaged their home to invest in something they did not understand
  - olliej 4y ago
    Fuck off, these were largely people who thought they were putting their life savings in with companies that were guaranteeing returns that were not outrageous, and were by and large being advertised as high interest savings accounts They were doing what the “experts” were telling them was the right thing to do. Fuck off with your victim blaming BS.
    - oneoff786 4y ago
      You don’t mortgage your house for a high interest savings account. It’s just stupid. Sure. They were manipulated. But there has to be some point at which adults are accountable for basic financial responsibility. You should not trust someone so much that you bet your home on it. That’s idiotic. If you can’t hold someone accountable for such decisions you are basically saying they should not be allowed to manage their own finances. People need to have critical thinking skills. If someone wanders into the wilderness and gets mauled by a bear they’re a victim but it’s largely a fault of their poor judgement. And it’s absolutely fair to criticize their reasoning.
whatever1 4y ago
What market investment is not speculative? Commodities? Forex? Stock market? Bonds? Rare art? Investing is a horrible idea for laypeople
- dadoge 4y ago
  Housing costs are increasing faster than inflation Hence, sad to say, it is becoming more the case that they key to homeownership in many cities is investing in something that grows faster than inflation as well It’s (sadly) largely the reason why I think Robinhood became so popular
- semicolon_storm 4y ago
  There's plenty of investments that aren't speculative. Speculative investments are high risk investments, not investments involving any degree of uncertainty. Bonds and broad market index funds are considered to not be speculative despite some degree of uncertainty about their future growth.
  - oarabbus_ 4y ago
    Broad market index funds are also speculative and high-risk, as many who lost 30-50%+ of their portfolio value when they needed it most during the 2008 GFC (or those who panic liquidated during the 2020 COVID crash) can attest to. Government bonds are one of the few "safe" low-yield investments.
    - whatever1 4y ago
      That is if the issuing gov does not also print a ton of cash to repay you, or default
- dymk 4y ago
  Index funds are speculative, and yet safe enough for lay-people to invest in.
  - sillyfleece 4y ago
hervature 4y ago
You are aware that the author of the article created your first reference right? Under this light, it is entirely possible they work on shedding light on the scams to defend those that are financially desperate. Your comments seem to imply the author has not thought these things through when obviously their empathy to those falling prey is rather high. That being said, similar to you, I believe that greed induced blindness (get rich quick) is just as bad as the person running the scam. People need to feel the pain (both financially and socially) of thinking you can get 20% annual returns for free.
IfOnlyYouKnew 4y ago
I'm not sure if this is intentional, but your first link, web3isgoinggreat.com, is a website by the same author as the article. The statement in question is obviously true in a literal sense. It is–almost as obviously–used to convey more than just the literal meaning, usually in the sense of "they shouldn't blame anybody", "they shouldn't ask for help", or "they deserve this". It is simply a basic question of humanity that people can get themselves into situations that are terrible in a way that is not proportional to whatever stupidity got them into it. Nobody would say the death penalty is appropriate for speeding, and we therefore help people who are injured in accidents. The details are obviously subjective: a blanket bailout for people losing money in these markets would strike me as inappropriate. But so does obvious glee at their suffering.
- cercatrova 4y ago
  There are anecdotes, even in this very thread, of people mortgaging their house to invest into crypto. This isn't a case of off-the-cuff investments, one must knowingly and willingly mortgage their house to retrieve the money to put into an investment. At that point, one must take care of their own financial health if they do something so willingly. To your speeding analogy, most of these people are losing proportionally. Unless they're margin trading, if they put in 500k from their house mortgage into a coin which crashes, they lose at most 500k, they don't lose more than that, which is a 1 to 1 proportional amount. Now on the other hand, there are some Robinhood traders who turn 5k into -750k [0], usually through options, and that is what I'd call disproportional, and I have some sympathy for that, often because those people didn't even know their losses could be so large. [0] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/alex-kearns-robinhood-trader-suicide-wrongful-death-suit/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/alex-kearns-robinhood-trader-su...
throwk8s 4y ago
Many of the people who lost more than they can afford to lose were naive, not greedy. I believe that's the author's main point. The problem is that cryptocurrency purveyors have marketing budgets, and cryptocurrency skeptics do not. It's difficult for people to get the message that cryptocurrencies are a scam when the promoters are running superbowl advertisements, and the detractors can only comment on the internet.
jjulius 4y ago
>And even if it were after scams happening, there have been so many [0] that surely people would understand that future scams are likely. Pyramid schemes, ponzi schemes, and all sorts of other schemes would like a word with you. Scams can be around for a long, long time while still bilking plenty of people.
JumpCrisscross 4y ago
> gives no reasons why the author's thesis should be true I believe the author’s thesis is we need public resources to start holding promoters accountable. Criminally, if they defrauded. Financially if they were just dumb. Nobody is seriously advocating for reïmbursing the victims. I wouldn’t go so far as to say they deserve what they got. But it’s their problem to solve.
- Animats 4y ago
  Before this is over, we may see the heads of some crypto promoters on pikes in front of the People's Bank of China.[1] "China has executed the former head of one of its biggest asset management companies who was convicted of corruption. ... The execution of Lai Xiaomin was carried out on Friday three weeks after the 58-year-old was sentenced to death by a court in Tianjin. Lai was found guilty of taking bribes amounting to Rmb1.8bn ($280m) over a 10-year period when he worked at Huarong Asset Management and before that at the China Banking Regulatory Commission. ... The court said Lai’s crimes had caused serious losses to the interests of the nation." [1] https://www.tomshardware.com/news/china-crypto-illegal-prison-term https://www.tomshardware.com/news/china-crypto-illegal-priso... [2] https://www.ft.com/content/820cf0ec-09a7-4d2e-a86d-897de725d712 https://www.ft.com/content/820cf0ec-09a7-4d2e-a86d-897de725d...
  - JumpCrisscross 4y ago
    Xi is personally a billionaire from graft [1][2]. We need actual prosecution around crypto in America. Not Beijing-style show trials. [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2012-06-29/xi-jinping-millionaire-relations-reveal-fortunes-of-elite https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2012-06-29/xi-jinpin... [2] https://www.cbc.ca/amp/1.2504987 https://www.cbc.ca/amp/1.2504987
Clubber 4y ago
>I have no sympathy for these people. A lot of everyday Joe's and Jane's put money into crypto. The amount of hype from crypto was pretty strong, including some governments adopting it. You should have some sympathy for those people.
2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
My old Master Sergeant in the Marines told us about one of his guys being blown to bits for messing with an IED when he was told repeatedly not to. He said that instead of feeling bad he laughed at how fucking stupid the guy must have been. We are grown ass adults. How many warnings do you ignore before something bad happens? In the spirit of my Master Sergeant I laugh at these imbeciles losing all of their money.
- olliej 4y ago
  How many news reports and articles about people making money were there about crypto? How many tech sites were filled with people talking about how crypto was going to change the world? How many “influencers” and celebrities were advertising crypto? How many Super Bowl ads? How is a person who simply wants their savings account to make more interest than inflation meant to know that all of that was a scam? It’s not like these people and companies were being charged with fraud.
olliej 4y ago
Plenty of the victims of this are people who invested in Real Companies that guaranteed 3-4% returns, which is higher than bank interest rates but also lower than, and ostensibly lower risk than, the stock market. For many of the victims of the crypto scams index and retirement funds are unavailable or apparently higher risk than what the cryptobros have been claiming crypto as. These victims aren’t being greedy or playing stupid games, they were simply trying to do the best they could with what they had - and all the cryptobros have been saying for a few years now - apparently supported by markets surging (often through wash sales and other fraud). Or there were the people who were explicitly and repeatedly told that their deposits were FDIC insured, only to discover that that was also a lie. Don’t fucking victim blame you PoS.
- cercatrova 4y ago
  Anyone who "invests" in something with "guaranteed" returns is a fool in my eyes. There is no such thing as a guaranteed return, and I suppose no amount of fools will change that fact.
yucky 4y ago
>This article gives no reasons why the author's thesis should be true, besides people being desperate. It's not a thesis, it's just clickbait. No need to give it any credit or attention.

wmf 4y ago

I think Molly kinda buried the lede here which is that crypto companies and influencers explicitly encouraged people to invest money they could not afford to lose. The crypto "community" need to own up to this.

dadoge 4y ago
That is true, esp with Michael Saylors comment about mortgage your house to buy buy BTC…I am pro BTC, but that is utterly horrible advice. That is indeed buried relative to many other points
- hammyhavoc 4y ago
  Yep. Know an elderly couple that did exactly this, and so did their friends. It is shockingly common. They were all exploited. Someone should be held accountable.
  - bagacrap 4y ago
    ...really? what were they hoping to gain? By the time you're elderly I feel like you should understand that there's no such thing as low risk high reward investing.
    - hammyhavoc 4y ago
      To beat inflation. Simple as that. Interest rates aren't moving in line with the rate of inflation, ergo running out of money before they croak becomes something to be concerned by, thus most folks make investments in retirement to compensate for this. Lots of folks online saying that crypto is the only way to beat inflation. We both know that's bullshit, but with so many people huffing the laughing gas, it's easy to get taken in, especially with influencers and the Crypto.com Stadium et al.
      - dehrmann 4y ago
        I like this thought and buy the motivation, but why not stocks?
        hammyhavoc 4y ago
        Stocks aren't anywhere near as hyped, and countries aren't making stocks into legal tender ala Bitcoin, and Chivo. Not that I'm advocating for any of this BTW. It just seems like a perfect storm of massive hype, a lot of very convincing marketing, and the wind blowing in the right direction between a pandemic, Brexit, war, and a possible recession. When desperate, and many big names are involved, it can obviously look quite seductive. Used to work in this predatory niche about 7 years ago. Never again.
    - PuppyTailWags 4y ago
- foogazi 4y ago
  But are you owning up to this ?
  - dadoge 4y ago
    What do you mean?
    - foogazi 4y ago
      GP wmf stated: > The crypto "community" need to own up to this. Whatever that means
nharada 4y ago
Yes. Saying "don't invest more than you can afford to lose" while building an entire industry around convincing people to do exactly that is allowing these people to absolve themselves of responsibility by pointing out they offered a disclaimer at the start. It also fits in well with the generally libertarian nature of the crypto culture, allowing blame to lie with "personal responsibility" rather than grifting or scamming. It's like when the tobacco industry sponsored ads to "prevent kids from smoking" while investing millions in targeting them anyway.
- oarabbus_ 4y ago
  How is this different than trading equities on the stock market (a decidedly non-libertarian culture)? Stock brokerages provide the exact same disclaimers - equities are inherently high-risk assets in which you can lose everything you've put in.
  - nharada 4y ago
    I actually think the stock brokerages have done a similar thing -- it used to be that sophisticated and risky products like high leverage options were not available to retail traders who didn't have the money to lose, but with the rise of meme stocks and Robinhood things have changed. I'm not saying I think that's okay either. And look, I'm not defending the current banking system. Should average people have no options while the wealthy can use complex derivatives to increase their wealth and power? Probably not. I'm just pointing out that the crypto world shouldn't be doing this specific thing.
    - oarabbus_ 4y ago
      I agree that brokerages have done similar lately, with massive ad campaigns targeting retail traders, gamifying their apps, and generally obfuscating the risks involved to less-informed individuals. And as you mention in the second part, it is a very difficult and tricky balance between protecting retail traders while preventing them access to instruments that the wealthy can use to further increase wealth. As an example, it used to be that USA-based customers could leverage trade (short trade or margin leverage long trade) on crypto exchanges, for example Kraken. However, due to regulatory pressure, Kraken now requires registering as an Eligible Contract Participant in order to margin/leverage trade - the key requirement being proof of $10M in discretionary assets. On one hand, this is probably a net "good" - short trading or leveraged long trades are _extremely_ risky, with the former having infinite loss potential and the latter resulting in margin calls or a greater loss than the account is worth (i.e. you're in debt to the exchange). I have little doubt that retail traders would've lost more money were this restriction not in place. On the other hand, this reeks of "you must be this rich to enter; peons need not apply". A wealthy person can 66
superchroma 4y ago
Also worth noting that ordinary investors were cheated by proxy through no effort of their own as the firms investing their money have taken crypto on to their investment portfolios.
sobkas 4y ago
If you believe entities* on the internet to do anything(that includes investment) you have bigger problem than some random crypto investments. A lot of parts of internet looks safe, but it's always one step away from a hack, so don't overestimate it safety. Also people lie to get your money, that includes "celebrities" and companies. *Most of the time you don't have idea if you talk to(or receive information from) real person, some hacker who hijacked their account, a program pretending to be a human(from emacs doctor to gpt3 and beyond), etc.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
yucky 4y ago
Personal responsibility is a thing. Where does this idea that everyone must be protected from themselves come from? More importantly, where does it end? Should your barber be held accountable for providing a bad stock tip too?
- jollybean 4y ago
  Yes, but accountability for spreading false information is a thing as well. What if someone says to take some drug 'because it's safe' - when it's not? I say let the lawsuits begin. Or better yet, have some kind of basic regs. Whenever anyone talks about 'health' or 'finance' in the commons, they had better be very clearly indicating that 'they don't know what the F they are talking about' and that people ought to 'talk to a doctor/accredited financial advisor' first and that 'following this advice could lead to illness/bankruptcy' etc.. I would love to see theses turds have to follow the same regs drug companies do: "This diarrhea medicine may cause X, Y, Z and A, B, C etc."
  - yucky 4y ago
    >What if someone says to take some drug 'because it's safe' - when it's not? Well it depends on who it is (which goes back to personal responsibility). If I'm taking drugs that my barber recommended I deserve the same fate as if I buy the stocks or crypto he recommended.
    - jollybean 4y ago
      Yes, but some people present themselves as being credible. Authors, bloggers, etc. make it their professional interest to give such advice. The guy saying 'sell your home to buy BTC' is one such person. We need credible groups and institutions.
      - yucky 4y ago
        How does that work though? Does the government need to regulate what we can talk about? Who determines who is "Credible"? >The guy saying 'sell your home to buy BTC' is one such person. Almost nobody did that though. Which means 99.99999999% of people saw that to be bad advice and acted accordingly. For the handful who decided it was a great idea, that's on them. We don't need to regulate the speech of everyone to protect the biggest idiots from themselves.
caeril 4y ago
> crypto companies and influencers explicitly encouraged This wasn't Jim Cramer or some vetted CNBC talking head talking P/E ratios or future earnings potential. These are carefully-engineered social media accounts with follower counts blown up by obvious market-engineering campaigns. Again, to OP's point, if you're putting your life savings into speculative investment X, from the word of a rando instagram "influencer", you get what you deserve. Anybody in 2022 who doesn't understand that most social media presences are carefully curated, engineered, and biased, is a fool. Live or die by the word of the shoeshine boy, it's a tale as old as time. We all learned of 1637 and 1929 in high school history. If you didn't pay attention, that's on you.

ourmandave 4y ago

I have sympathy for all of them. Like the article says, some were greedy but all were lied to. The only thing they have left is a hard lesson learned. On the flip side, the frauds, criminals, and liars that run the entire crypto circus can all die in a fire.

988747 4y ago
Some lies are so obvious that if you believe them you are at fault. Nigerian prince wants to send you 10 million dollars, but doesn't have the funds to cover wire transfer fee? Someone promises you to double your within a month with crypto? If you believe in any of those then you're clearly incapable of making your own life decisions, and your money will be put to much better use by the scammer who tricked you than by yourself.
- ourmandave 4y ago
  If you believe in any of those then you're clearly incapable of making your own life decisions, and your money will be put to much better use by the scammer who tricked you than by yourself. And yet here we are with a bunch of people who were wiped the fuck out by promises the crypto ponzi scheme Voyager deposits were FDIC insured. Except customer's funds were considered loans to Voyager and it was Voyager's deposits that were protected, not their victims. But I'm sure the criminals running Voyager are spending the money much more wisely than some grandma on a pension ever could.
  - 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
    > Voyager deposits were FDIC insured. They were? Then everybody will be compensated.
    - olliej 4y ago
      Dude read, I get that you think the victims deserve to lose their savings because of course the dominant financial news for the last few years with no fraud charges was clearly a scam, right? The voyager victims were repeatedly and explicitly told that their deposits were FDIC insured - they were literally doing the “right” thing and putting their money in a safe high[er] interest rate bank, and their money was insured if the company did collapse. Except they were being lied to the entire time, and there was no such insurance, so all their “safe” savings are now gone, while the owners of the fund are rich. But yeah, it was clearly the victims fault.

hammyhavoc 4y ago

You say all this, but I know a disabled elderly couple who bought into it based on the hype and advice of people around them. Needless to say, all of them lost their money. Not everybody wants a "get rich quick" scheme, a decent chunk of folks just want to beat inflation and make sure they can afford to stay retired in their old age. With how people were talking about crypto up until recently, you would think it was "better than gold" or "better than stocks" or "better than forex". Those were repeated commonly by many people who were in no position to be offering any kind of financial advice. Look at all the celebrities that got on board with pumping tokens. Look at the Staples Center being renamed as the Crypto.com Stadium. Look at world governments mulling over CDBCs. Look at El Salvador with Bitcoin and Chivo. I'm not saying "crypto good, you are wrong", I am completely anti-cryptocurrency in its current form, there isn't one viable use for it, and that's without even getting into throughput speeds, scaling issues, or energy consumption. I am however saying that victim shaming is shady.

oneoff786 4y ago
If they just wanted stability they should not have mortgaged their home to invest in something they did not understand
- olliej 4y ago
  Fuck off, these were largely people who thought they were putting their life savings in with companies that were guaranteeing returns that were not outrageous, and were by and large being advertised as high interest savings accounts They were doing what the “experts” were telling them was the right thing to do. Fuck off with your victim blaming BS.
  - oneoff786 4y ago
    You don’t mortgage your house for a high interest savings account. It’s just stupid. Sure. They were manipulated. But there has to be some point at which adults are accountable for basic financial responsibility. You should not trust someone so much that you bet your home on it. That’s idiotic. If you can’t hold someone accountable for such decisions you are basically saying they should not be allowed to manage their own finances. People need to have critical thinking skills. If someone wanders into the wilderness and gets mauled by a bear they’re a victim but it’s largely a fault of their poor judgement. And it’s absolutely fair to criticize their reasoning.

whatever1 4y ago

What market investment is not speculative? Commodities? Forex? Stock market? Bonds? Rare art? Investing is a horrible idea for laypeople

dadoge 4y ago
Housing costs are increasing faster than inflation Hence, sad to say, it is becoming more the case that they key to homeownership in many cities is investing in something that grows faster than inflation as well It’s (sadly) largely the reason why I think Robinhood became so popular
semicolon_storm 4y ago
There's plenty of investments that aren't speculative. Speculative investments are high risk investments, not investments involving any degree of uncertainty. Bonds and broad market index funds are considered to not be speculative despite some degree of uncertainty about their future growth.
- oarabbus_ 4y ago
  Broad market index funds are also speculative and high-risk, as many who lost 30-50%+ of their portfolio value when they needed it most during the 2008 GFC (or those who panic liquidated during the 2020 COVID crash) can attest to. Government bonds are one of the few "safe" low-yield investments.
  - whatever1 4y ago
    That is if the issuing gov does not also print a ton of cash to repay you, or default
dymk 4y ago
Index funds are speculative, and yet safe enough for lay-people to invest in.
- sillyfleece 4y ago

hervature 4y ago

You are aware that the author of the article created your first reference right? Under this light, it is entirely possible they work on shedding light on the scams to defend those that are financially desperate. Your comments seem to imply the author has not thought these things through when obviously their empathy to those falling prey is rather high. That being said, similar to you, I believe that greed induced blindness (get rich quick) is just as bad as the person running the scam. People need to feel the pain (both financially and socially) of thinking you can get 20% annual returns for free.

IfOnlyYouKnew 4y ago

I'm not sure if this is intentional, but your first link, web3isgoinggreat.com, is a website by the same author as the article. The statement in question is obviously true in a literal sense. It is–almost as obviously–used to convey more than just the literal meaning, usually in the sense of "they shouldn't blame anybody", "they shouldn't ask for help", or "they deserve this". It is simply a basic question of humanity that people can get themselves into situations that are terrible in a way that is not proportional to whatever stupidity got them into it. Nobody would say the death penalty is appropriate for speeding, and we therefore help people who are injured in accidents. The details are obviously subjective: a blanket bailout for people losing money in these markets would strike me as inappropriate. But so does obvious glee at their suffering.

cercatrova 4y ago
There are anecdotes, even in this very thread, of people mortgaging their house to invest into crypto. This isn't a case of off-the-cuff investments, one must knowingly and willingly mortgage their house to retrieve the money to put into an investment. At that point, one must take care of their own financial health if they do something so willingly. To your speeding analogy, most of these people are losing proportionally. Unless they're margin trading, if they put in 500k from their house mortgage into a coin which crashes, they lose at most 500k, they don't lose more than that, which is a 1 to 1 proportional amount. Now on the other hand, there are some Robinhood traders who turn 5k into -750k [0], usually through options, and that is what I'd call disproportional, and I have some sympathy for that, often because those people didn't even know their losses could be so large. [0] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/alex-kearns-robinhood-trader-suicide-wrongful-death-suit/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/alex-kearns-robinhood-trader-su...

throwk8s 4y ago

Many of the people who lost more than they can afford to lose were naive, not greedy. I believe that's the author's main point. The problem is that cryptocurrency purveyors have marketing budgets, and cryptocurrency skeptics do not. It's difficult for people to get the message that cryptocurrencies are a scam when the promoters are running superbowl advertisements, and the detractors can only comment on the internet.

jjulius 4y ago

>And even if it were after scams happening, there have been so many [0] that surely people would understand that future scams are likely. Pyramid schemes, ponzi schemes, and all sorts of other schemes would like a word with you. Scams can be around for a long, long time while still bilking plenty of people.

JumpCrisscross 4y ago

> gives no reasons why the author's thesis should be true I believe the author’s thesis is we need public resources to start holding promoters accountable. Criminally, if they defrauded. Financially if they were just dumb. Nobody is seriously advocating for reïmbursing the victims. I wouldn’t go so far as to say they deserve what they got. But it’s their problem to solve.

Animats 4y ago
Before this is over, we may see the heads of some crypto promoters on pikes in front of the People's Bank of China.[1] "China has executed the former head of one of its biggest asset management companies who was convicted of corruption. ... The execution of Lai Xiaomin was carried out on Friday three weeks after the 58-year-old was sentenced to death by a court in Tianjin. Lai was found guilty of taking bribes amounting to Rmb1.8bn ($280m) over a 10-year period when he worked at Huarong Asset Management and before that at the China Banking Regulatory Commission. ... The court said Lai’s crimes had caused serious losses to the interests of the nation." [1] https://www.tomshardware.com/news/china-crypto-illegal-prison-term https://www.tomshardware.com/news/china-crypto-illegal-priso... [2] https://www.ft.com/content/820cf0ec-09a7-4d2e-a86d-897de725d712 https://www.ft.com/content/820cf0ec-09a7-4d2e-a86d-897de725d...
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago
  Xi is personally a billionaire from graft [1][2]. We need actual prosecution around crypto in America. Not Beijing-style show trials. [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2012-06-29/xi-jinping-millionaire-relations-reveal-fortunes-of-elite https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2012-06-29/xi-jinpin... [2] https://www.cbc.ca/amp/1.2504987 https://www.cbc.ca/amp/1.2504987

Clubber 4y ago

>I have no sympathy for these people. A lot of everyday Joe's and Jane's put money into crypto. The amount of hype from crypto was pretty strong, including some governments adopting it. You should have some sympathy for those people.

2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago

My old Master Sergeant in the Marines told us about one of his guys being blown to bits for messing with an IED when he was told repeatedly not to. He said that instead of feeling bad he laughed at how fucking stupid the guy must have been. We are grown ass adults. How many warnings do you ignore before something bad happens? In the spirit of my Master Sergeant I laugh at these imbeciles losing all of their money.

olliej 4y ago
How many news reports and articles about people making money were there about crypto? How many tech sites were filled with people talking about how crypto was going to change the world? How many “influencers” and celebrities were advertising crypto? How many Super Bowl ads? How is a person who simply wants their savings account to make more interest than inflation meant to know that all of that was a scam? It’s not like these people and companies were being charged with fraud.

olliej 4y ago

Plenty of the victims of this are people who invested in Real Companies that guaranteed 3-4% returns, which is higher than bank interest rates but also lower than, and ostensibly lower risk than, the stock market. For many of the victims of the crypto scams index and retirement funds are unavailable or apparently higher risk than what the cryptobros have been claiming crypto as. These victims aren’t being greedy or playing stupid games, they were simply trying to do the best they could with what they had - and all the cryptobros have been saying for a few years now - apparently supported by markets surging (often through wash sales and other fraud). Or there were the people who were explicitly and repeatedly told that their deposits were FDIC insured, only to discover that that was also a lie. Don’t fucking victim blame you PoS.

cercatrova 4y ago
Anyone who "invests" in something with "guaranteed" returns is a fool in my eyes. There is no such thing as a guaranteed return, and I suppose no amount of fools will change that fact.

yucky 4y ago

>This article gives no reasons why the author's thesis should be true, besides people being desperate. It's not a thesis, it's just clickbait. No need to give it any credit or attention.