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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 h

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?
  - lordfrito 4y ago
    The way we protect 80 yo grandmas is by sounding alarms to anyone that will listen that this is a scam. Especially if that 80 yo grandma is yours. It's why the anti-crypto crowd has been so vocal. They're not haters. They're trying to warn others. The frustration in that crowd is that you're ridiculed for your lack of faith. Hence the schadenfreude.
- A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago
  There is nothing wrong with crypto in an abstract. There is a reason it was brought into existence to begin with ( onerous KYC, BSA regs and so on ). Naturally, the pieces that made it interesting ( pseudo-anonymity, non-reversibility ) made it worthwhile. The issue is that it became a defacto tool of choice for average fraudster to rehash old scams. I am not feeling the pain, but I am also not celebrating. I want balance and getting SBF should bring some semblance of it ( semblance, because he should be not connected enough to make sufficient amount of connected people angry and vindictive ).
  - astrange 4y ago
    There’s a lot of things wrong with it in abstract!
    - A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago
      Could you elaborate? I do not want to assume your position and put words in your mouth.
      - astrange 4y ago
        "It's a more expensive version of Transferwise that's only useful for criminals, but isn't useful for them because their transaction history is public and forever" should be good enough. That and "it doesn't get any more useful as you add nodes, but you still have to add them or people can hack it".
        A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago
        << "It's a more expensive version of Transferwise that's only useful for criminals, but isn't useful for them because their transaction history is public and forever" That is is testable. I used it and whether it is more expensive appears to depend a lot how/when/what you use to facilitate it.. not completely unlike Transferwise, which is basically a broker of such services, which is how they can offer them at a relative low cost. If I used it and found it useful, does that make me a criminal? << only useful for criminals, but isn't useful for them because their transaction history is public and forever" should be good enough. What you seem to be saying is that crypto has properties that are useful and properties that are not useful. In a practical sense, that means it is just like any other payment type ( fedwire has speed over ACH in US; Zelle has convenience over SWIFT in US ). All of these leave some of sort of trace. Crypto's differentiating factor is that the ledger is public. It is both good and bad depending on what you want to achieve. So, allow me to reframe the question, if only criminals use it, why do they do it if it is not useful to them. Your argument is a little flimsy. << That and "it doesn't get any more useful as you add nodes, but you still have to add them or people can hack it". I agree in principle, but between all the hacks we have seen from all the other non-crypto companies over the past few years, I am not willing to hold crypto to a higher standard.
- smcl 4y ago
  > Yeah it sucks average Joe's got suckered. I feel the pain. So I didn't explicitly say it in my original post because I didn't want it to be too wordy, but yes it is pretty awful that some scammy bullshit was permitted to be advertised to average consumers as if it was a normal investment, and that as a result people will have invested in something that will (in my opinion) ultimately be worth nothing. I was horrified to see giant crypto.com adverts in my mid-sized Central-European city - since it means that many people will have assumed that this is just some new tech asset class (rather than a delicately balanced house of cards) and then effectively dumped some money into a black hole
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

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?
- lordfrito 4y ago
  The way we protect 80 yo grandmas is by sounding alarms to anyone that will listen that this is a scam. Especially if that 80 yo grandma is yours. It's why the anti-crypto crowd has been so vocal. They're not haters. They're trying to warn others. The frustration in that crowd is that you're ridiculed for your lack of faith. Hence the schadenfreude.
A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago
There is nothing wrong with crypto in an abstract. There is a reason it was brought into existence to begin with ( onerous KYC, BSA regs and so on ). Naturally, the pieces that made it interesting ( pseudo-anonymity, non-reversibility ) made it worthwhile. The issue is that it became a defacto tool of choice for average fraudster to rehash old scams. I am not feeling the pain, but I am also not celebrating. I want balance and getting SBF should bring some semblance of it ( semblance, because he should be not connected enough to make sufficient amount of connected people angry and vindictive ).
- astrange 4y ago
  There’s a lot of things wrong with it in abstract!
  - A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago
    Could you elaborate? I do not want to assume your position and put words in your mouth.
    - astrange 4y ago
      "It's a more expensive version of Transferwise that's only useful for criminals, but isn't useful for them because their transaction history is public and forever" should be good enough. That and "it doesn't get any more useful as you add nodes, but you still have to add them or people can hack it".
      - A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago
        << "It's a more expensive version of Transferwise that's only useful for criminals, but isn't useful for them because their transaction history is public and forever" That is is testable. I used it and whether it is more expensive appears to depend a lot how/when/what you use to facilitate it.. not completely unlike Transferwise, which is basically a broker of such services, which is how they can offer them at a relative low cost. If I used it and found it useful, does that make me a criminal? << only useful for criminals, but isn't useful for them because their transaction history is public and forever" should be good enough. What you seem to be saying is that crypto has properties that are useful and properties that are not useful. In a practical sense, that means it is just like any other payment type ( fedwire has speed over ACH in US; Zelle has convenience over SWIFT in US ). All of these leave some of sort of trace. Crypto's differentiating factor is that the ledger is public. It is both good and bad depending on what you want to achieve. So, allow me to reframe the question, if only criminals use it, why do they do it if it is not useful to them. Your argument is a little flimsy. << That and "it doesn't get any more useful as you add nodes, but you still have to add them or people can hack it". I agree in principle, but between all the hacks we have seen from all the other non-crypto companies over the past few years, I am not willing to hold crypto to a higher standard.
smcl 4y ago
> Yeah it sucks average Joe's got suckered. I feel the pain. So I didn't explicitly say it in my original post because I didn't want it to be too wordy, but yes it is pretty awful that some scammy bullshit was permitted to be advertised to average consumers as if it was a normal investment, and that as a result people will have invested in something that will (in my opinion) ultimately be worth nothing. I was horrified to see giant crypto.com adverts in my mid-sized Central-European city - since it means that many people will have assumed that this is just some new tech asset class (rather than a delicately balanced house of cards) and then effectively dumped some money into a black hole

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.