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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

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.
    - olliej 4y ago
      Yes you do. If you have the money to pay off your house, you are likely better off getting a very low interest rate mortgage (which you will be able to do as you can provide 100% security for the loan) and put your vast pile of money into a higher rate CD or similar. Or even some of it in low-medium risk index fund. If you were a company, it would likely be seen as financial mismanagement not to do that. That's why companies that have more money than is possibly reasonable still have loans. But anyway that's beside the point. These people are not claiming to be victims due to crypto crashing, in fact many have their entire balance with Voyager in US dollars/USDC (which I just checked, is still 1:1 with USD). They are complaining that they went to withdraw the money that was in their account, and Voyager wouldn't let them, and then declared bankruptcy. Even at this point it would be more annoying than anything else, as Voyager had stated that they were FDIC insured so everyone's deposits were insured in the case that Voyager failed/declared bankruptcy. Only then was it disclosed that Voyager had been lying about that, and in fact there was no deposit insurance, and they had stolen the content of everyone's accounts. What you are saying is no different from, say, BofA declaring bankruptcy and that it wasn't actually FDIC insured so everyone has lost the money in their bank accounts; then I turn around and say that it's those people's fault as they didn't understand BofA's financials, and that the people who lost money didn't verify the FDIC insurance themselves. I sure as hell don't understand Wells Fargo's financials, and rely on them not lying about being FDIC insured.
      - oneoff786 4y ago
        > Yes you do. If you have the money to pay off your house, you are likely better off getting a very low interest rate mortgage (which you will be able to do as you can provide 100% security for the loan) and put your vast pile of money into a higher rate CD or similar. Or even some of it in low-medium risk index fund. Typically small net returns with long tail risks that include you losing your home. Seems like garbage advice to me. > These people are not claiming to be victims due to crypto crashing, in fact many have their entire balance with Voyager in US dollars/USDC (which I just checked, is still 1:1 with USD). They gave money to a company they did not understand. The company lost the money. As far as I can tell the company only claimed that US dollars were insured not that it really matters. > What you are saying is no different from, say, BofA declaring bankruptcy and that it wasn't actually FDIC insured so everyone has lost the money in their bank accounts; then I turn around and say that it's those people's fault as they didn't understand BofA's financials, and that the people who lost money didn't verify the FDIC insurance themselves. I sure as hell don't understand Wells Fargo's financials, and rely on them not lying about being FDIC insured. Bank of America is a very old company subject to regulation and is not suggesting anything about big returns. Hardly comparable By all means, let’s regulate companies. But let’s not pretend people aren’t accountable for validating their own investments.
christophilus 4y ago
It's not victim shaming to say, "You shouldn't invest more than you can afford to lose." You can say that and still feel bad about the tragedies that are playing out around you. I know someone who pulled all of his money out of the stock markets right as it was bottoming in 2009. The guy is not capable of making investment decisions. He's the kind of guy who falls for scams, quickly buys into conspiracy theories, etc. I'm not being condescending. It's just an honest assessment. I really don't know what we're supposed to do as a society for folks like him, though. At the very least, I think public schools should have a mandatory financial literacy course that gives an overview of how to run your finances, and maybe a brief foray into things like iSeries bonds, etc. Extra points if it covers bubbles and busts and the psychology behind them, etc. Having read a few books on the subject, it was obvious we were in a bubble in the past few years. Literally all of the tropes I heard after the 2000 bubble were happening, from sports bars playing CNBC to random folks like a plumber boasting about trading Doge coin.
- majormajor 4y ago
  It's victim shaming to say that and not push for the behavior of people who, for instance, told reporters that Luna was doomed while happily making money off people using his platform to buy it to be criminalized and shamed: From https://www.bitcoininsider.org/article/165364/sam-bankman-fried-explains-why-ust-crash-was-predictable https://www.bitcoininsider.org/article/165364/sam-bankman-fr... sourcing a Bloomberg interview that itself seems to be paywalled: ----- One of the most interesting phenomenon happening right now is the rise of Luna and UST. Luna has this Treasury Reserve consisting of a lot of Bitcoin, which seems a little dicey, but some people say any idea of an algorithmically-backed stablecoin is a perpetual motion machine – it’s only a matter of time before it fails. Do you believe there can be a truly decentralized stablecoin? What do you make of these projects? SBF: I do have some sympathy to the perpetual motion machine crowd here. They can serve some useful purposes, but if you do zoom out, right, and you say, this is a stablecoin, backed by volatile assets, what’s gonna happen in a big market move. Right? Like, you know how this plays out. ----- Is there a word better than "despicable" for believing that at least some things in the ecosystem are a scam but still profiting off helping people get scammed by those things? Why would you just feel bad about the tragedies and not also furious at these people happily making money off of the tragedies?

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.
  - olliej 4y ago
    Yes you do. If you have the money to pay off your house, you are likely better off getting a very low interest rate mortgage (which you will be able to do as you can provide 100% security for the loan) and put your vast pile of money into a higher rate CD or similar. Or even some of it in low-medium risk index fund. If you were a company, it would likely be seen as financial mismanagement not to do that. That's why companies that have more money than is possibly reasonable still have loans. But anyway that's beside the point. These people are not claiming to be victims due to crypto crashing, in fact many have their entire balance with Voyager in US dollars/USDC (which I just checked, is still 1:1 with USD). They are complaining that they went to withdraw the money that was in their account, and Voyager wouldn't let them, and then declared bankruptcy. Even at this point it would be more annoying than anything else, as Voyager had stated that they were FDIC insured so everyone's deposits were insured in the case that Voyager failed/declared bankruptcy. Only then was it disclosed that Voyager had been lying about that, and in fact there was no deposit insurance, and they had stolen the content of everyone's accounts. What you are saying is no different from, say, BofA declaring bankruptcy and that it wasn't actually FDIC insured so everyone has lost the money in their bank accounts; then I turn around and say that it's those people's fault as they didn't understand BofA's financials, and that the people who lost money didn't verify the FDIC insurance themselves. I sure as hell don't understand Wells Fargo's financials, and rely on them not lying about being FDIC insured.
    - oneoff786 4y ago
      > Yes you do. If you have the money to pay off your house, you are likely better off getting a very low interest rate mortgage (which you will be able to do as you can provide 100% security for the loan) and put your vast pile of money into a higher rate CD or similar. Or even some of it in low-medium risk index fund. Typically small net returns with long tail risks that include you losing your home. Seems like garbage advice to me. > These people are not claiming to be victims due to crypto crashing, in fact many have their entire balance with Voyager in US dollars/USDC (which I just checked, is still 1:1 with USD). They gave money to a company they did not understand. The company lost the money. As far as I can tell the company only claimed that US dollars were insured not that it really matters. > What you are saying is no different from, say, BofA declaring bankruptcy and that it wasn't actually FDIC insured so everyone has lost the money in their bank accounts; then I turn around and say that it's those people's fault as they didn't understand BofA's financials, and that the people who lost money didn't verify the FDIC insurance themselves. I sure as hell don't understand Wells Fargo's financials, and rely on them not lying about being FDIC insured. Bank of America is a very old company subject to regulation and is not suggesting anything about big returns. Hardly comparable By all means, let’s regulate companies. But let’s not pretend people aren’t accountable for validating their own investments.

christophilus 4y ago

It's not victim shaming to say, "You shouldn't invest more than you can afford to lose." You can say that and still feel bad about the tragedies that are playing out around you. I know someone who pulled all of his money out of the stock markets right as it was bottoming in 2009. The guy is not capable of making investment decisions. He's the kind of guy who falls for scams, quickly buys into conspiracy theories, etc. I'm not being condescending. It's just an honest assessment. I really don't know what we're supposed to do as a society for folks like him, though. At the very least, I think public schools should have a mandatory financial literacy course that gives an overview of how to run your finances, and maybe a brief foray into things like iSeries bonds, etc. Extra points if it covers bubbles and busts and the psychology behind them, etc. Having read a few books on the subject, it was obvious we were in a bubble in the past few years. Literally all of the tropes I heard after the 2000 bubble were happening, from sports bars playing CNBC to random folks like a plumber boasting about trading Doge coin.

majormajor 4y ago
It's victim shaming to say that and not push for the behavior of people who, for instance, told reporters that Luna was doomed while happily making money off people using his platform to buy it to be criminalized and shamed: From https://www.bitcoininsider.org/article/165364/sam-bankman-fried-explains-why-ust-crash-was-predictable https://www.bitcoininsider.org/article/165364/sam-bankman-fr... sourcing a Bloomberg interview that itself seems to be paywalled: ----- One of the most interesting phenomenon happening right now is the rise of Luna and UST. Luna has this Treasury Reserve consisting of a lot of Bitcoin, which seems a little dicey, but some people say any idea of an algorithmically-backed stablecoin is a perpetual motion machine – it’s only a matter of time before it fails. Do you believe there can be a truly decentralized stablecoin? What do you make of these projects? SBF: I do have some sympathy to the perpetual motion machine crowd here. They can serve some useful purposes, but if you do zoom out, right, and you say, this is a stablecoin, backed by volatile assets, what’s gonna happen in a big market move. Right? Like, you know how this plays out. ----- Is there a word better than "despicable" for believing that at least some things in the ecosystem are a scam but still profiting off helping people get scammed by those things? Why would you just feel bad about the tragedies and not also furious at these people happily making money off of the tragedies?