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> no company in the entire crypto space that isn't a wretched hive of scum and villainy Entire financial space. It's just that traditional financial companies

> no company in the entire crypto space that isn't a wretched hive of scum and villainy Entire financial space. It's just that traditional financial companies are better regulated (and are better at working within the regulations to hide their crimes). But they are not in any way better humans. For every FTX or Binance there's an Enron or Deutch Bank ten times the size and just as villainous.

DonHopkins 4y ago
The armies of shill-droids that constantly post deflective whataboutism, fallacious predictions, unethical financial advice, strained rationalizations, and false equivalencies to justify the unregulated crypto space aren't better humans, or even human at all. The dark side of the force with them.
- heartbeats 4y ago
  I don't think you should suggest people are "not even human," even if they're behaving in a deeply unethical fashion.
  - rytor718 4y ago
    I could be wrong, but I read the implication as bots/machines that trade in the financial markets. But again I could have totally misunderstood OP.
roflyear 4y ago
> Entire financial space. This is true: it is about making money, after all. Greed is a good thing.
- DanHulton 4y ago
  It is most certainly not.
  - roflyear 4y ago
    If you mean greed isn't good, you're right - I meant to finance companies, greed is a good thing. It's the point.
    - cmrdporcupine 4y ago
      The problem is there are people who hold strongly to an ideological position that greed is, in fact, a good thing. So if you can still edit, you might want to clarify that you weren't stating that in your comment :-)
      - DonHopkins 4y ago
        Fair warning. And those same greedy libertarian crypto shills are a dime a dozen in these discussions, but nobody's buying what they have to say and more. Edit: I've recently seen a significant reduction of blatant crypto shilling posts from people like that on this forum (thanks to good moderation, and people calling them out on their lies, and linking to proof of their scams and well documented history of crimes). For example, it's been ages since I've seen any posts here from the notorious scammer and spammer Richard "Dodge Dodge" Heart (whose real name is Richard J "Spam King" Schueler, winner of the "Golden Pump Award" for "Best New Scam" for his POS get-rich-quick pyramid scheme called "HEX"). He was trying to recruit and exploit unsuspecting developers here on HN to implement and operate his scams in exchange for promises of shitcoin equity. https://bitcoin-takeover.com/deconstructing-richard-hearts-lies-about-bitcoin/ https://bitcoin-takeover.com/deconstructing-richard-hearts-l... https://learn.bybit.com/defi/what-is-hex-crypto/ https://learn.bybit.com/defi/what-is-hex-crypto/ https://protos.com/richard-hearts-curious-launch-of-hex-pulse-and-pulsex/ https://protos.com/richard-hearts-curious-launch-of-hex-puls... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29367412 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29367412 https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=RichardHeart https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=RichardHeart
        cmrdporcupine 4y ago
        I mean clearly people are buying it, or at least were when it looked like easy "money for nothing" to quote the song
hef19898 4y ago
Enron gave us SOX, for reasons. Deutsche Bank is, like UBS and basically any other international bank, involved in all kinds of shady businesses, from money laundering to tax fraud. Those banks are usually fined, I do agree so that those scandals are very under covered. Deutsche Ban an other have yet to directly defraud customers of their deposits, not even WireCard managed to do that.
adrr 4y ago
Name a financial firm that had a significant negative impact on consumers? Wells Fargo scandal is the only one i can name but the total losses to all customers involved was $2M which they got compensated with $140M payout.
- dumbfoundded 4y ago
  Our banking system nearly collapsed in 2008. Lots of people got hurt. Financialization of the US economy is a larger, delayed version of what happened to General Electric.
  - vkou 4y ago
    > Our banking system nearly collapsed in 2008. Lots of people got hurt. Yes, plenty of people got hurt because they made shitty investments. How many people got hurt due to their bank running off with their money to the Bahamas/betting it all on red? Because that's the degree of 'hurt' that the various crypto exchanges have been inflicting on their customers. Can you find me one American who lost money from their savings account in 2008? Or just had it go poof from their stock brokerage?
    - adrr 4y ago
      Investments were only bad in the short term. TARP, which purchased these assets, ended up being profitable for the government.
      - WeylandYutani 4y ago
        Good call yeah. Dutch government managed to buy up banks for cheap and made a profit on them. "Almost crashed" is not the same as "crashed". 2008 Was a stress test and the system survived.
    - dumbfoundded 4y ago
      I responded to: "Name a financial firm that had a significant negative impact on consumers?" I didn't respond to which financial firms stole money from customers. What SBF did was more like Bernie Madoff. The only reason we didn't have bank runs and frozen accounts is because the Fed stepped in to provide liquidity to the whole market. The banking system would've collapsed similar to the Great Depression without such action. Lots of people lost their savings in the Great Depression.
rocket_surgeron 4y ago
My bank is constantly and repeatedly recognized as one of the best-run, most ethical, and most customer-centric companies in the United States, if not the entire planet. Of course it is not publicly-traded, so that eliminates one source of pressure to be a wretched hive of scum and villainy. Of particular note is that they are the largest bank in the United States to not require or take a bailout during the financial crisis. I imagine credit unions have the same lack of pressure that my bank does and it is incomprehensible to me that someone would patronize a financial institution that has incentives to screw them over to make their quarterly report look good. It is entirely possible to interface with the financial system without dealing with scumbags, or putting your faith into digital magic beans that immediately collapse when the Ponzi stops. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USAA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USAA
- FormerBandmate 4y ago
  JP Morgan didn’t require a bailout but was forced to so people wouldn’t know which banks actually needed bailouts, to stop bank runs. AFAIK Wells Fargo was in the same boat (although the Wachovia acquisition led it to need some help, Wachovia was insolvent)
  - rocket_surgeron 4y ago
    I might be wrong but my foggy memory recalls that JP Morgan was in good shape because they were the top of the mortgage-backed security pyramid and that years later their penalty for misleading investors prior to the financial crisis was the highest of all time(or of all the banks?).

DonHopkins 4y ago

The armies of shill-droids that constantly post deflective whataboutism, fallacious predictions, unethical financial advice, strained rationalizations, and false equivalencies to justify the unregulated crypto space aren't better humans, or even human at all. The dark side of the force with them.

heartbeats 4y ago
I don't think you should suggest people are "not even human," even if they're behaving in a deeply unethical fashion.
- rytor718 4y ago
  I could be wrong, but I read the implication as bots/machines that trade in the financial markets. But again I could have totally misunderstood OP.

roflyear 4y ago

> Entire financial space. This is true: it is about making money, after all. Greed is a good thing.

DanHulton 4y ago
It is most certainly not.
- roflyear 4y ago
  If you mean greed isn't good, you're right - I meant to finance companies, greed is a good thing. It's the point.
  - cmrdporcupine 4y ago
    The problem is there are people who hold strongly to an ideological position that greed is, in fact, a good thing. So if you can still edit, you might want to clarify that you weren't stating that in your comment :-)
    - DonHopkins 4y ago
      Fair warning. And those same greedy libertarian crypto shills are a dime a dozen in these discussions, but nobody's buying what they have to say and more. Edit: I've recently seen a significant reduction of blatant crypto shilling posts from people like that on this forum (thanks to good moderation, and people calling them out on their lies, and linking to proof of their scams and well documented history of crimes). For example, it's been ages since I've seen any posts here from the notorious scammer and spammer Richard "Dodge Dodge" Heart (whose real name is Richard J "Spam King" Schueler, winner of the "Golden Pump Award" for "Best New Scam" for his POS get-rich-quick pyramid scheme called "HEX"). He was trying to recruit and exploit unsuspecting developers here on HN to implement and operate his scams in exchange for promises of shitcoin equity. https://bitcoin-takeover.com/deconstructing-richard-hearts-lies-about-bitcoin/ https://bitcoin-takeover.com/deconstructing-richard-hearts-l... https://learn.bybit.com/defi/what-is-hex-crypto/ https://learn.bybit.com/defi/what-is-hex-crypto/ https://protos.com/richard-hearts-curious-launch-of-hex-pulse-and-pulsex/ https://protos.com/richard-hearts-curious-launch-of-hex-puls... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29367412 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29367412 https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=RichardHeart https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=RichardHeart
      - cmrdporcupine 4y ago
        I mean clearly people are buying it, or at least were when it looked like easy "money for nothing" to quote the song

hef19898 4y ago

Enron gave us SOX, for reasons. Deutsche Bank is, like UBS and basically any other international bank, involved in all kinds of shady businesses, from money laundering to tax fraud. Those banks are usually fined, I do agree so that those scandals are very under covered. Deutsche Ban an other have yet to directly defraud customers of their deposits, not even WireCard managed to do that.

adrr 4y ago

Name a financial firm that had a significant negative impact on consumers? Wells Fargo scandal is the only one i can name but the total losses to all customers involved was $2M which they got compensated with $140M payout.

dumbfoundded 4y ago
Our banking system nearly collapsed in 2008. Lots of people got hurt. Financialization of the US economy is a larger, delayed version of what happened to General Electric.
- vkou 4y ago
  > Our banking system nearly collapsed in 2008. Lots of people got hurt. Yes, plenty of people got hurt because they made shitty investments. How many people got hurt due to their bank running off with their money to the Bahamas/betting it all on red? Because that's the degree of 'hurt' that the various crypto exchanges have been inflicting on their customers. Can you find me one American who lost money from their savings account in 2008? Or just had it go poof from their stock brokerage?
  - adrr 4y ago
    Investments were only bad in the short term. TARP, which purchased these assets, ended up being profitable for the government.
    - WeylandYutani 4y ago
      Good call yeah. Dutch government managed to buy up banks for cheap and made a profit on them. "Almost crashed" is not the same as "crashed". 2008 Was a stress test and the system survived.
  - dumbfoundded 4y ago
    I responded to: "Name a financial firm that had a significant negative impact on consumers?" I didn't respond to which financial firms stole money from customers. What SBF did was more like Bernie Madoff. The only reason we didn't have bank runs and frozen accounts is because the Fed stepped in to provide liquidity to the whole market. The banking system would've collapsed similar to the Great Depression without such action. Lots of people lost their savings in the Great Depression.

rocket_surgeron 4y ago

My bank is constantly and repeatedly recognized as one of the best-run, most ethical, and most customer-centric companies in the United States, if not the entire planet. Of course it is not publicly-traded, so that eliminates one source of pressure to be a wretched hive of scum and villainy. Of particular note is that they are the largest bank in the United States to not require or take a bailout during the financial crisis. I imagine credit unions have the same lack of pressure that my bank does and it is incomprehensible to me that someone would patronize a financial institution that has incentives to screw them over to make their quarterly report look good. It is entirely possible to interface with the financial system without dealing with scumbags, or putting your faith into digital magic beans that immediately collapse when the Ponzi stops. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USAA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USAA

FormerBandmate 4y ago
JP Morgan didn’t require a bailout but was forced to so people wouldn’t know which banks actually needed bailouts, to stop bank runs. AFAIK Wells Fargo was in the same boat (although the Wachovia acquisition led it to need some help, Wachovia was insolvent)
- rocket_surgeron 4y ago
  I might be wrong but my foggy memory recalls that JP Morgan was in good shape because they were the top of the mortgage-backed security pyramid and that years later their penalty for misleading investors prior to the financial crisis was the highest of all time(or of all the banks?).