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Fidelity now allows clients to put bitcoins in IRAs
- sheetjs 13y agoNow for the crash ... (the retirement accounts are usually the last ones holding the bag)
- fat0wl 13y agoyeahhhhhhhh... first thing i thought when i saw this: "this is dark"
- simbolit 13y agofor the non-Americans: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Individual_retirement_account https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Individual_retirement_account
- gojomo 13y agoSecondMarket's BitcoinTrust appears to still be limited to accredited investors, though. Wealth tests ought to be just as illegal as other forms of discrimination.
- jorgem 13y ago>> Wealth tests Apparently, you can lie: http://www.quora.com/How-do-you-become-an-accredited-investor http://www.quora.com/How-do-you-become-an-accredited-investo...
- JumpCrisscross 13y agoThat constitutes fraud. If the SEC found out the company would get fined and the individual potential fines, asset forfeitures, and even jail time.
- oijaf888 13y agoHas any individual ever been charged with fraud for misrepresenting their wealth? I understand its likely that the company faces fines and such, but I've never heard of an individual getting in trouble.
- gojomo 13y agoI doubt simply "finding out" would guarantee enforcement. They'd need time and an inclination to care, and tangible evidence. If there was no crime by the issuer other than being a little too trustworthy, it's unclear what the prioritization and penalties would be. I suspect the bigger risk is that the buyer – the not-really-'accredited' – has some dispute with the company and sues, causing problems because the various assumptions-of-competence (that come with 'accredited' status) are then voided. It gives a bad-faith or disgruntled investor more leverage over the issuer.
- kevinpet 13y agoWell, the company could certainly be in hot water for selling to a non-accredited investor, but I've yet to see anyone who can point to a penalty that can be levied against the lying investor.
- javert 13y agoClearly we shouldn't let middle class people fund budding enterprises. It is better to forcefully stop rational people from risking their money, in an attempt to protect irrational people from making irrational decisions. People who want to let the middle class take risks that could help them become wealthy are operating under the premise that this is supposed to be a free country---a premise that the country's elected and respected political leadership has wisely decided to adamantly ignore.
- drone 13y agoHow can you make a rational decision when you have incomplete, or false information?
- prutschman 13y agoWho are you to decide whether I have incomplete or false information?
- drone 13y agoPrior to the securities Act of 1933, the measure of viability of a particular investment vehicle was on a state-by-state basis where they wouldn't allow investment vehicles that were unlikely to return a positive return to most investors (see Blue Sky Laws). The Act required all securities to be traded to be registered (in a nutshell), but allowed a loophole that effectively said "if the investor can afford to lose all of their investment, you don't need to go through the trouble of registering it, and you can rely on the investor to judge the value of the investment." Who am I? I have no intent to judge, however, as the act was prompted not by fantasy, but by watching many, many investors get sold on bad deals via poor information. In fact, the event which led to this was considered one of the greatest financial disasters in the history of America. So, you may be smart - and you may in fact be smarter than all of the swindlers who may try to take your money. I'd wager most who don't invest as a primary exercise aren't that smart (I only need to look back a couple of years), and I can't imagine how you'd propose to change a -means- test with an -abilities- test. Before you can invest in an oil well, should you be required to prove that you are above average in knowledge about the business of running oil wells?
- drone 13y agoIt's a test that's defined by law [1], ostensibly to protect the non-wealthy from being scammed easily. [2] AFAIK, the intent is to prevent scammers from directly selling highly risky investments to the average Joe without explaining to them the complete depths of the risk. [1] http://www.sec.gov/answers/accred.htm http://www.sec.gov/answers/accred.htm [2] http://www.institutionalinvestorsalpha.com/Article/3214072/SEC-Commissioner-Walter-Says-Accredited-Investor-Standards-are-Too-Low.html http://www.institutionalinvestorsalpha.com/Article/3214072/S...
- fragsworth 13y agoYeah, well, it also fucks over an intelligent but average-income Joe from being allowed to invest in deals that have as high of a return. For instance, I know right now that I'd like to invest a chunk of cash into several VR companies. I can't, though, because I'm not accredited. I have to wait for their IPOs, which will happen way after everyone already finds out how much it's all worth.
- drone 13y agoWhat is the average rate of return for LPs in VC funds?
- pfisch 13y agoThe good of accredited investor laws far outweigh the bad. People who don't have a lot of money are much more likely to not have good money management skills than people who are able to hold on to lots of money for long time periods. Without accredited investor laws you would just pour tons and tons of dumb money into the system and the volume of scams would go way up. This is not to say there are not rich people being conned, but when that happens it often does not bankrupt them because they are less likely to go all in on a single asset. Something people with poor money management skills want to do all the time.
- gojomo 13y agoTrue scams aren't much slowed by accredited investor laws. Scammers just move into the areas - gambling, real estate, amateur high-frequency-trading, under-the-table offerings - that escape SEC control. And people with poor money-management skills can already put all their money into legal things that go to zero - like lottery tickets or leveraged real-estate or Enron or pre-reorganization GM. And, 'dumb money' mainly gets smart by trial-and-error, and observing the lessons of peers. Locking all non-millionaires out of private investing prevents that process from even starting.
- ISL 13y agoI once rode in a taxi where the cabbie regaled me with his retirement plan; each time he'd saved up enough money, he'd go on a trip to Atlantic City and try to win. He was fairly certain that this was a good idea. Please don't play with more than you can afford to lose. It's bad for bitcoin, and a crash might be bad for you. If you can't afford to retire, society may compel others to help you. Please be responsible. I'm not a tax lawyer: The tax-free nature of Roth IRAs might render some of the questions of bitcoin taxation less of a concern?
- lukifer 13y agoThe funny thing about the cabbie story is that it only takes one statistical outlier success story for the meme to spread to a thousand others who fritter away their savings in this manner. I've also started to wonder recently about the relationship between the gambling instinct and entrepreneurship. While there is obviously a distinction (entrepreneurs are often pursuing genuine passions and/or creating real value), when you look at the real-world risks and returns, it certainly seems to have a similarly irrational component, both for founders and investors. (Not that I'm judging; the line between genius and madness is a thin one.)
- gnaritas 13y agoThat's because most people reason by anecdote rather than actual statistics, sad but in my experience true.
- NhanH 13y agoThere is the fact that to a certain extent, entrepreneurs know their odds going in. Gamblers more likely than not doesn't.
- bdcravens 13y agoMany gamblers know the numbers fairly well. The problem is they let their heart convince them that the Gambler's Fallacy doesn't exist for them.
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- samstave 13y agoI see all these ways to spend the mythical BitCoins, zero ways fro me to create some. Is there any feasible way to get any BTC when I only have my home couple of machines (none of which are GPU giants)?
- seiji 13y agoWebcam + Skype + Wallet ID + Lonely Person = Bitcoins.
- maxerickson 13y agoIt isn't what you mean, but you can get some by buying them. Mining bitcoin without special purpose hardware is pointless. Your best bet would be to predict whatever copycat was going to get popular and have mined some of it before that happened (but this isn't a simple prediction to get right...). Then you can probably trade those for bitcoin.
- nwh 13y agoAt this point there's almost 200 "the new thing" alt coins. Everybody wants to be in on "the new thing", which makes them all just pump and dump economies. It's a futile idea.
- maxerickson 13y ago
- smtddr 13y agoI am super-pro bitcoin supporter, but somehow I have a horrible feeling about this...
- Aqueous 13y agoWhy? The more mainstream investors come on, the more people will have a stake in BitCoin, the less single individuals can influence or manipulate the price, the more points of failure there are, the more stable it will be. I have a fidelity IRA with risk spread across very risk-averse mutual funds with dependable year after year growth. For me, this will just be one more thing I can add to my already fairly stable IRA, shielded from taxes, which is great...
- jorgem 13y ago>> the less single individuals can influence or manipulate the price 972 people control half of all bitcoins, right now. What makes you think things will get better? source: http://www.businessinsider.com/927-people-own-half-of-the-bitcoins-2013-12 http://www.businessinsider.com/927-people-own-half-of-the-bi...
- Aqueous 13y ago927 people controlling 50% of all BitCoins is better than it was at the beginning, with 1 person controlling 100% of all BitCoins. So it already has gotten better. I see no reason to believe that BitCoins won't diffuse further, given the recent growth of the network and trading volume.
- DustinCalim 13y agoI'd say that's on par or better than most corporations...
- ars_technician 13y agoSo? Corporations aren't pitching their stock as a currency. A currency isn't something that's meant to be hoarded by a few people. That causes deflation and deflationary currencies are poisonous to the economies because they discourage spending. How many people do you think are spending their coins vs how many are holding them hoping they will be worth more?
- jorgem 13y agoI could not find XBTFUND symbol (or any other search with the term "bitcoin") when I went to Fidelity.com Anyone know the symbol?
- KVFinn 13y agoSeems like most mainstream coverage about bitcoin is in the context of an investment instead of a currency. I wonder if this is hurtful in the long run -- thinking about bitcoin as something to stock away for retirement rather than a useful tool in transactions. Great for prices in the short term I guess.
- kolev 13y agoIt is hurtful - they are now truly turning it into DotCom 2.0 - they way the media created a hype back then!
- if_by_whisky 13y agoAll currencies are also investments. Investments that have additional properties that make them useful as a medium for exchange. Like divisibility, portability, etc... Btc is so volatile that it probably is, for many, better as an investment for the time being. Once there's less risk and more confidence, we could see that change.
- brokentone 13y agoIn fairness this isn't directly storing bitcoins in a fidelity wallet, there is now an EFTish fund that is bitcoin-backed accessible to fidelity customers.
- 3am 13y agoOh my god, is that ever inaccurate. It's a trust available only to accredited investors that happens to invest in Bitcoin. By that logic, you can put just about anything in your IRA. Here's a random Google result about the variety of bizarre funds out there: http://money.usnews.com/money/personal-finance/articles/2009/12/02/the-10-strangest-mutual-funds http://money.usnews.com/money/personal-finance/articles/2009... edit: corrected my mistaken categorization of SecondMarket investment vehicle. edit: invest in fine art (sorry, no funds open to new investment) - http://www.thefineartfund.com/index.php/en/products-and-services/funds/ http://www.thefineartfund.com/index.php/en/products-and-serv... edit: invest in vintage wines - http://www.wineinvestmentfund.com/index.aspx http://www.wineinvestmentfund.com/index.aspx ... and so on.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- kolev 13y agoCorrect me if I'm wrong, but isn't this the end of Bitcoin? It was created to keep us independent from Wall Street and governments and now when Big Money is interested in (profiting from) it, it's Game Over.
- damian2000 13y agoBut at least it would have served its purpose of redistributing some wealth from Wall Street into the pockets of first adopters and programmers. ;-)
- kolev 13y agoTrue, but those who will join late will be the big losers.
- bdcravens 13y agoThe moment that Bitcoin hit $30/BTC, it was over. The focus on BTC creating more fiat currency means that 99% of those with a position in BTC are missing the point.
- if_by_whisky 13y agoIt was not created to do anything of the sort.
- kolev 13y agoOh, and that's why the guy/guys used a pseudonym? It was exactly created for that purpose - (pseudo)anonymous electronic cash equivalent, which has just one purpose.
- if_by_whisky 13y agoYou said it was created to keep us independent from wall street and government. And then you suggested that wall st's participation in btc would be detrimental if not an existential threat (?) to btc as a medium of exchange. Is that an unfair characterization? I'm pretty sure satoshi created btc to make a ton of money. All ideological attachments to that endeavor seem to have been added by other people who may or may not understand his/their motivation.
- negamax 13y agoThis is a great idea to offload the high prices to the last mile. Now there just need to be a major push on news about Bitcoin and it be a perfect slaughterhouse.