9 ms·

Popcorn time. Is it wrong that I'm smiling?

smcl 4y ago
A few irritating people will get a moment of being shamed in public and a large amount of people ranging from "stay poor" cryptobros to naive people swayed by shiny advertising will lose a lot of money. Just savour the moment the SBFs and the CZs of the world get their just deserts and pray that it isn't the first domino of a bigger problem that spreads outside crypto
- jasonwatkinspdx 4y ago
  The people I feel worst about are friends and family of someone with some tech credentials that convinced them all to jump in. You can say these people should have vetted their investment but that's being a bit absurd. Media has been blasting stories about crypto successes uncritically for a couple years now. Some of the most high profile investors in the world are in all this. And on top of that, for our elderly relative, the young tech relative is exactly the person they ask for help in evaluating this investment opportunity. So you can say they shouldn't have invested if they weren't 100% certain, but again I think that's just denying the reality of things.
  - lordfrito 4y ago
    Plenty of people were saying crypto was nonsense for a long time. Yeah it sucks average Joe's got suckered. I feel the pain. But every generation brings a new group of greedy people that fall for get rich quick schemes, and they all usually learn there ain't no thing as a free ride the hard way. People like this won't listen to the warnings. "Have fun staying poor". I'm sorry there's collateral damage. But people like this are going to get conned somewhere. Best these people learn a lesson, then they can be smarter with the rest of their lives. Yeah, the media was all hype. Well guess what, the media isn't reality folks. And they're certainly not looking out for you. More timeless lessons to learn. Be careful who you trust. Keep the government away from money!! Hey FBI someone stole my bitcoins! So much old wisdom being re-learned right now. It's about time. The longer this was going to go on the more people were gonna get hurt.
    - jasonwatkinspdx 4y ago
      Yeah, you can say "they should have known it was too good" but I mean seriously, huge sporting events are plastered in cryptocoin logos. High profile papers like the WSJ spent years portraying cryptocoin as at least something as relevant as traditional finance if not its proximate replacement. The biggest banks and VCs are deeply involved and trumpeting loudly. Huge old school tech companies like IBM suddenly talking about the blockchain revolution. And my 80 year old aunt is somehow supposed to read that all this is just an astoundingly massive bubble? I just don't think it's a realistic expectation. This has happened many times before, which is why we have these regulations in the first place. Lessons relearned indeed.
      - luckylion 4y ago
        > And my 80 year old aunt is somehow supposed to read that all this is just an astoundingly massive bubble? No, she's supposed to read "8-18% per year guaranteed, no risk*" and say "there's no legal way that's possible and there are too many asterisks, I'll stay with Vanguard".
        befair164 4y ago
        What about the endless warnings about hyperinflation and dollar deprecation in order to encourage crypto? Not everyone's aunt is out for a Lambo. The parent comment is totally correct that innocent people were slammed from every angle to the point where even pro investors or techies couldn't see through the SCAM.
        scrubs 4y ago
        Def! If your grandma says that please pass on my atta' girl! Nice to know somebody has got a grandma with the good kind of attitude
        dokein 4y ago
        The concept of an average Joe holding an index fund only became popularized in the 1980s or even 1990s. A lot of grandmas kept their money in a savings account or in bonds for decades while becoming significantly poorer on a relative basis. How is a person with early stage dementia supposed to differentiate between "new thing that's actually an incredibly wise investment decision" (i.e. Vanguard, popularized in the WSJ in the 1980s) versus "new thing that's actually mostly a scam" (i.e. most of crypto, popularized in the WSJ in the 2010s) when their once-trusted sources of information have failed them so miserably?
  - freejazz 4y ago
    > Media has been blasting stories about crypto successes Really? Maybe crypto media
  - Barrin92 4y ago
    >You can say these people should have vetted their investment but that's being a bit absurd. Is it? It's just plain old avarice. When someone comes to you and says, "give me a coffer full of money, I'll bring you ten coffers back, don't ask too many questions", you know you're gambling, don't need to be a genius to see that. My grandfather who had like six years of formal education and lived in a village of 300 people always told me to not invest money into anything that you don't understand. That's about the level of common sense required to dodge the crypto bullet. People got greedy, and wilfully ignored the shadiness because they wanted to earn outsized returns quickly without doing anything, that's about it.
    - jasonwatkinspdx 4y ago
      > Is it? It's just plain old avarice. When someone comes to you and says, "give me a coffer full of money, I'll bring you ten coffers back, don't ask too many questions", you know you're gambling, don't need to be a genius to see that. That's not the situation however. The situation was "My relative that I trust and love, that has a successful career doing tech stuff, says this all is a good idea. Also I see people on all the big tv channels and major papers, including the WSJ, saying similar sounding things. Consider that someone in that age bracket might have entirely not selfish reasons, like wanting to leave the best inheritance possible. How are they supposed to know all these crypto folks are different from a simple diversified portfolio, when apparently the same experts are hawking both? You people still do not seem to understand the fundamental point: you see things from a vantage other people cannot, and it's insane to demand that every random member of society have this degree of sophistication about tech meets securities fraud, doubly so when major media outlets have been hyping this stuff for years uncritically.
      - acdha 4y ago
        > You people still do not seem to understand the fundamental point: you see things from a vantage other people cannot, and it's insane to demand that every random member of society have this degree of sophistication about tech meets securities fraud, doubly so when major media outlets have been hyping this stuff for years uncritically. It's not “cannot” but “choose not to”. Continuously throughout this process anyone with a high-school level econ education knew that cryptocurrencies were a high-risk investment and, in most cases, could not possibly deliver the advertised benefits. The fact that some people in the media hyped it up didn't mean that you couldn't listen to the many people in the media who urged caution, or remember that those same people hyping it up had a history of being wrong about other things as well. People _wanted_ to believe there was a way to make a ton of money without doing any real work and so they _chose_ only to listen to the bulls. Hopefully the lesson wasn't too expensive for most of them but it's important to remember that throughout this process there was no specialized education or skill needed to understand that meteoric returns are not sustainable long-term and speculation always involves risk. The same skills which kept your great grandfather from buying swamp land in Florida or “investing” in a 90mph carburetor design worked here, too. That's the problem with the “My relative that I trust and love, that has a successful career doing tech stuff, says this all is a good idea.” stuff — it's tragic when that happened but those kind of sales pitches (and, let's be honest, that's what that was) were someone urging their relatives not to listen to the sober voices. We don't need to make excuses on behalf of the people who mislead their friends and family to make a buck.
  - stubish 4y ago
    > Media has been blasting stories about crypto successes uncritically for a couple years now. If that sort of media did not have crypto to hype, it would be something else like hedge funds or Chinese Yuan or fintech or some amazing security where the risk is obscured. r/wallstreetbets had exactly the same sort of clickbait cheerleading and it is still going on to some extent.
- lordfrito 4y ago
  I get it. I don't see the contagion spreading, unless some real crimes were also committed on the TradFi side of things. But unlike 2008, these crimes aren't institutional and will have real names attached to them. The worst I see is crypto dying a firey death, people go to jail, and a new generation of avg greedy folk learn the hard truths about get rich quick schemes. All well deserved. Frankly I'm relived to finally get this experiment behind us. The sooner it dies the better. The bigger it got the more avg folk that were going to get scammed. Meanwhile the rest of us go back to our daily lives trying to figure out where to invest wisely.
  - WillPostForFood 4y ago
    Meanwhile the rest of us go back to our daily lives trying to figure out where to invest wisely. fine gold coins, r/wallstreetbets, lottery tickets, and shares in "art masterworks"
    - lordfrito 4y ago
      My point being that many of the people who were "bullish" on some of those ideas (r/wallstreetbets), are re-evaluating things right now in light of crypto implosion. That's a positive outcome for me.
- Obscurity4340 4y ago
  CZ?

smcl 4y ago

A few irritating people will get a moment of being shamed in public and a large amount of people ranging from "stay poor" cryptobros to naive people swayed by shiny advertising will lose a lot of money. Just savour the moment the SBFs and the CZs of the world get their just deserts and pray that it isn't the first domino of a bigger problem that spreads outside crypto

jasonwatkinspdx 4y ago
The people I feel worst about are friends and family of someone with some tech credentials that convinced them all to jump in. You can say these people should have vetted their investment but that's being a bit absurd. Media has been blasting stories about crypto successes uncritically for a couple years now. Some of the most high profile investors in the world are in all this. And on top of that, for our elderly relative, the young tech relative is exactly the person they ask for help in evaluating this investment opportunity. So you can say they shouldn't have invested if they weren't 100% certain, but again I think that's just denying the reality of things.
- lordfrito 4y ago
  Plenty of people were saying crypto was nonsense for a long time. Yeah it sucks average Joe's got suckered. I feel the pain. But every generation brings a new group of greedy people that fall for get rich quick schemes, and they all usually learn there ain't no thing as a free ride the hard way. People like this won't listen to the warnings. "Have fun staying poor". I'm sorry there's collateral damage. But people like this are going to get conned somewhere. Best these people learn a lesson, then they can be smarter with the rest of their lives. Yeah, the media was all hype. Well guess what, the media isn't reality folks. And they're certainly not looking out for you. More timeless lessons to learn. Be careful who you trust. Keep the government away from money!! Hey FBI someone stole my bitcoins! So much old wisdom being re-learned right now. It's about time. The longer this was going to go on the more people were gonna get hurt.
  - jasonwatkinspdx 4y ago
    Yeah, you can say "they should have known it was too good" but I mean seriously, huge sporting events are plastered in cryptocoin logos. High profile papers like the WSJ spent years portraying cryptocoin as at least something as relevant as traditional finance if not its proximate replacement. The biggest banks and VCs are deeply involved and trumpeting loudly. Huge old school tech companies like IBM suddenly talking about the blockchain revolution. And my 80 year old aunt is somehow supposed to read that all this is just an astoundingly massive bubble? I just don't think it's a realistic expectation. This has happened many times before, which is why we have these regulations in the first place. Lessons relearned indeed.
    - luckylion 4y ago
      > And my 80 year old aunt is somehow supposed to read that all this is just an astoundingly massive bubble? No, she's supposed to read "8-18% per year guaranteed, no risk*" and say "there's no legal way that's possible and there are too many asterisks, I'll stay with Vanguard".
      - befair164 4y ago
        What about the endless warnings about hyperinflation and dollar deprecation in order to encourage crypto? Not everyone's aunt is out for a Lambo. The parent comment is totally correct that innocent people were slammed from every angle to the point where even pro investors or techies couldn't see through the SCAM.
      - scrubs 4y ago
        Def! If your grandma says that please pass on my atta' girl! Nice to know somebody has got a grandma with the good kind of attitude
      - dokein 4y ago
        The concept of an average Joe holding an index fund only became popularized in the 1980s or even 1990s. A lot of grandmas kept their money in a savings account or in bonds for decades while becoming significantly poorer on a relative basis. How is a person with early stage dementia supposed to differentiate between "new thing that's actually an incredibly wise investment decision" (i.e. Vanguard, popularized in the WSJ in the 1980s) versus "new thing that's actually mostly a scam" (i.e. most of crypto, popularized in the WSJ in the 2010s) when their once-trusted sources of information have failed them so miserably?
- freejazz 4y ago
  > Media has been blasting stories about crypto successes Really? Maybe crypto media
- Barrin92 4y ago
  >You can say these people should have vetted their investment but that's being a bit absurd. Is it? It's just plain old avarice. When someone comes to you and says, "give me a coffer full of money, I'll bring you ten coffers back, don't ask too many questions", you know you're gambling, don't need to be a genius to see that. My grandfather who had like six years of formal education and lived in a village of 300 people always told me to not invest money into anything that you don't understand. That's about the level of common sense required to dodge the crypto bullet. People got greedy, and wilfully ignored the shadiness because they wanted to earn outsized returns quickly without doing anything, that's about it.
  - jasonwatkinspdx 4y ago
    > Is it? It's just plain old avarice. When someone comes to you and says, "give me a coffer full of money, I'll bring you ten coffers back, don't ask too many questions", you know you're gambling, don't need to be a genius to see that. That's not the situation however. The situation was "My relative that I trust and love, that has a successful career doing tech stuff, says this all is a good idea. Also I see people on all the big tv channels and major papers, including the WSJ, saying similar sounding things. Consider that someone in that age bracket might have entirely not selfish reasons, like wanting to leave the best inheritance possible. How are they supposed to know all these crypto folks are different from a simple diversified portfolio, when apparently the same experts are hawking both? You people still do not seem to understand the fundamental point: you see things from a vantage other people cannot, and it's insane to demand that every random member of society have this degree of sophistication about tech meets securities fraud, doubly so when major media outlets have been hyping this stuff for years uncritically.
    - acdha 4y ago
      > You people still do not seem to understand the fundamental point: you see things from a vantage other people cannot, and it's insane to demand that every random member of society have this degree of sophistication about tech meets securities fraud, doubly so when major media outlets have been hyping this stuff for years uncritically. It's not “cannot” but “choose not to”. Continuously throughout this process anyone with a high-school level econ education knew that cryptocurrencies were a high-risk investment and, in most cases, could not possibly deliver the advertised benefits. The fact that some people in the media hyped it up didn't mean that you couldn't listen to the many people in the media who urged caution, or remember that those same people hyping it up had a history of being wrong about other things as well. People _wanted_ to believe there was a way to make a ton of money without doing any real work and so they _chose_ only to listen to the bulls. Hopefully the lesson wasn't too expensive for most of them but it's important to remember that throughout this process there was no specialized education or skill needed to understand that meteoric returns are not sustainable long-term and speculation always involves risk. The same skills which kept your great grandfather from buying swamp land in Florida or “investing” in a 90mph carburetor design worked here, too. That's the problem with the “My relative that I trust and love, that has a successful career doing tech stuff, says this all is a good idea.” stuff — it's tragic when that happened but those kind of sales pitches (and, let's be honest, that's what that was) were someone urging their relatives not to listen to the sober voices. We don't need to make excuses on behalf of the people who mislead their friends and family to make a buck.
- stubish 4y ago
  > Media has been blasting stories about crypto successes uncritically for a couple years now. If that sort of media did not have crypto to hype, it would be something else like hedge funds or Chinese Yuan or fintech or some amazing security where the risk is obscured. r/wallstreetbets had exactly the same sort of clickbait cheerleading and it is still going on to some extent.
lordfrito 4y ago
I get it. I don't see the contagion spreading, unless some real crimes were also committed on the TradFi side of things. But unlike 2008, these crimes aren't institutional and will have real names attached to them. The worst I see is crypto dying a firey death, people go to jail, and a new generation of avg greedy folk learn the hard truths about get rich quick schemes. All well deserved. Frankly I'm relived to finally get this experiment behind us. The sooner it dies the better. The bigger it got the more avg folk that were going to get scammed. Meanwhile the rest of us go back to our daily lives trying to figure out where to invest wisely.
- WillPostForFood 4y ago
  Meanwhile the rest of us go back to our daily lives trying to figure out where to invest wisely. fine gold coins, r/wallstreetbets, lottery tickets, and shares in "art masterworks"
  - lordfrito 4y ago
    My point being that many of the people who were "bullish" on some of those ideas (r/wallstreetbets), are re-evaluating things right now in light of crypto implosion. That's a positive outcome for me.
Obscurity4340 4y ago
CZ?