4 ms·

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

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.
- rendall 4y ago
  > huge sporting events are plastered in [x] logos Not to pile on, but if one is getting financial advice from sporting event logos, it is yet another timeless lesson to learn not to do that.
  - smcl 4y ago
    Yeah but it's way more subtle than that. Nobody's going "oh, the Heat play at the FTX Arena? I gotta get in on that...". A whole host of things - sports sponsorship, advertising, celebrity endorsement, backing by traditional finance and media - all contributed to making crypto seem to the layperson like just a new type of asset like any other. They maybe didn't fully grok it, but they also don't grok exactly how ETFs, Index Funds or Mutual Funds work either and a few of these exchanges played along and allowed people to pretend that they were buying a Real Thing.
    - rendall 4y ago
      Are you suggesting some kind of mechanism or rule to prevent people making unwise investments? If so, how would it work? Who decides wise versus unwise a priori? What happens when the Committee of Wise Investors is wrong about something? Or corrupted?
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

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.
rendall 4y ago
> huge sporting events are plastered in [x] logos Not to pile on, but if one is getting financial advice from sporting event logos, it is yet another timeless lesson to learn not to do that.
- smcl 4y ago
  Yeah but it's way more subtle than that. Nobody's going "oh, the Heat play at the FTX Arena? I gotta get in on that...". A whole host of things - sports sponsorship, advertising, celebrity endorsement, backing by traditional finance and media - all contributed to making crypto seem to the layperson like just a new type of asset like any other. They maybe didn't fully grok it, but they also don't grok exactly how ETFs, Index Funds or Mutual Funds work either and a few of these exchanges played along and allowed people to pretend that they were buying a Real Thing.
  - rendall 4y ago
    Are you suggesting some kind of mechanism or rule to prevent people making unwise investments? If so, how would it work? Who decides wise versus unwise a priori? What happens when the Committee of Wise Investors is wrong about something? Or corrupted?

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