4 ms·

> 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 q

> 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.

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.