3 ms·

Young Men Are Making Risky Bets on Crypto and Politics–and Raking It In

3 points by impish9208 2y ago

impish9208 2y ago
Gift link: https://www.wsj.com/finance/investing/young-men-investing-bitcoin-stocks-sports-betting-1d44cf8c?st=t6BeEC https://www.wsj.com/finance/investing/young-men-investing-bi...
paulpauper 2y ago
All this hype yet bitcoin's returns since 2021 are pretty mediocre compared to past performance. Bitcoin was up 11x in 2017 alone. It's only up 100% for YOY. One can achieve returns comparable to bitcoin with leveraged tech funds, but minus the idiosyncratic risk of crypto. Alex Monahan, 28, bought crypto and started betting on sports around the same time in 2019, taking the advice of his co-workers at the financial firm Susquehanna International Group. He was already “gambling other people’s money” at work, he reasoned. He now feels as though he didn’t educate himself enough. The 2022 collapse of crypto exchange FTX erased about $400,000 from his portfolio. Although he has gotten roughly half of that back so far, he hasn’t bought crypto since. He continues sports betting and now creates videos about it full-time. I am sure he has made more $ from his high-high paying finance job than that other stuff.
- talldayo 2y ago
  > It's only up 100% for YOY. When you consider that it's base ledger only gets more unusable by the day, it's kinda shocking. People basically had to invent new ways to send Bitcoins to one another because the Bitcoin layer itself is fundamentally useless at this point. Nobody wants to pay for gas fees when they can use an L2 chain, miners are being disenfranchised as mining difficulty skyrockets, and users are (somehow) still demanding more digital coinage. Every rung on the ladder is getting loose and people still want to climb it without even knowing where it leads to. The sort of stupidity that would be admirable if it was bravery and not petty greed.
  - jarsin 2y ago
    And ETH is the stock exchange of the 20's before all the regulations we have now that came about as a result of all the fraud back then. Rug pulls and fraud everywhere you turn. Kids openly live streaming rug pulls and laughing at all the suckers. Question is how much higher it can go before it's the short of the lifetime.
    - Ekaros 2y ago
      Hearing again about whole Hawk Tuah fiasco I am starting to think that most people involved know that things are scams, but they just think they can beat the game and get in and out at right time... It is kinda funny to see the cycle over and over again. I mean looking back to alt-coins(litecoin etc.) then ICOs then NFTs and now whatever they are doing again... I have not even kept track of most of it. All somehow generating money from somewhere... And then going down again.
JSDevOps 2y ago
Yep. The 9 - 5 now is seen as totally last resort and seen as a failure now.
- gjvc 2y ago
  This will not end well
bediger4000 2y ago
What percentage of young men making such risky bets are "raking it in"? I'll bet it's very small. But that's on the WSJ to figure out, they're the newspaper, it's their job, after all.

3 points by impish9208 2y ago

Gift link: https://www.wsj.com/finance/investing/young-men-investing-bitcoin-stocks-sports-betting-1d44cf8c?st=t6BeEC https://www.wsj.com/finance/investing/young-men-investing-bi...

paulpauper 2y ago

All this hype yet bitcoin's returns since 2021 are pretty mediocre compared to past performance. Bitcoin was up 11x in 2017 alone. It's only up 100% for YOY. One can achieve returns comparable to bitcoin with leveraged tech funds, but minus the idiosyncratic risk of crypto. Alex Monahan, 28, bought crypto and started betting on sports around the same time in 2019, taking the advice of his co-workers at the financial firm Susquehanna International Group. He was already “gambling other people’s money” at work, he reasoned. He now feels as though he didn’t educate himself enough. The 2022 collapse of crypto exchange FTX erased about $400,000 from his portfolio. Although he has gotten roughly half of that back so far, he hasn’t bought crypto since. He continues sports betting and now creates videos about it full-time. I am sure he has made more $ from his high-high paying finance job than that other stuff.

talldayo 2y ago
> It's only up 100% for YOY. When you consider that it's base ledger only gets more unusable by the day, it's kinda shocking. People basically had to invent new ways to send Bitcoins to one another because the Bitcoin layer itself is fundamentally useless at this point. Nobody wants to pay for gas fees when they can use an L2 chain, miners are being disenfranchised as mining difficulty skyrockets, and users are (somehow) still demanding more digital coinage. Every rung on the ladder is getting loose and people still want to climb it without even knowing where it leads to. The sort of stupidity that would be admirable if it was bravery and not petty greed.
- jarsin 2y ago
  And ETH is the stock exchange of the 20's before all the regulations we have now that came about as a result of all the fraud back then. Rug pulls and fraud everywhere you turn. Kids openly live streaming rug pulls and laughing at all the suckers. Question is how much higher it can go before it's the short of the lifetime.
  - Ekaros 2y ago
    Hearing again about whole Hawk Tuah fiasco I am starting to think that most people involved know that things are scams, but they just think they can beat the game and get in and out at right time... It is kinda funny to see the cycle over and over again. I mean looking back to alt-coins(litecoin etc.) then ICOs then NFTs and now whatever they are doing again... I have not even kept track of most of it. All somehow generating money from somewhere... And then going down again.

JSDevOps 2y ago

Yep. The 9 - 5 now is seen as totally last resort and seen as a failure now.

gjvc 2y ago
This will not end well

bediger4000 2y ago

What percentage of young men making such risky bets are "raking it in"? I'll bet it's very small. But that's on the WSJ to figure out, they're the newspaper, it's their job, after all.