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Bankers Ditch Fat Salaries to Chase Digital Currency Riches

bloomberg.com

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Re: Bankers Ditch Fat Salaries to Chase Digital Currency Riches

#91

Post by throwaway86328 »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #86
throwaway86328 wrote: post #81

Uh, isn't it also illegal to buy unlicensed securities? Couldn't the SEC also prosecute individuals who bought into obvious scams as unaccredited investors? IANAL, but securities fraud is securities fraud. Why even take the risk? Why, especially now, announce to the world that you're taking the risk like in the article?

Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice. Don't take investment advice from my Internet comments. > isn't it also illegal to buy unlicensed securities There are "safe harbors" like Regulation D [1]. This is how private companies issue securities. There are still rules about to whom you can sell your securities and the minimum information you have to make available to them. Needless to say, I have no…

I highly doubt most ICOs qualify for exemptions, let alone notified the SEC of their intentions to make a public offering.

Re: Bankers Ditch Fat Salaries to Chase Digital Currency Riches

#92

Post by aaron-lebo »

SippinLean wrote: post #76
richardknop wrote: post #42

Investing in crypto is like a gambling addiction. I know some people who were paper millionaires based on their BTC during the days before Mt Gox collapse. They lost their entire savings once Mt Gox collapsed, since then they have spent years working hard to recover their savings and now they are investing all of it in ICOs. This won't end well. Seems to me like the story is repeating. On a side note, the brigading/s…

>the brigading/shilling here on HN is becoming quite annoying Can you point to a single post where the top, say, 5 comments aren't completely negative toward crypto as a whole? They typically mention gambling, fraud, ponzi schemes and (like yours) Mt Gox, in a rant that isn't specifically tied to the post at hand. Look at the top comments on this article: >Investing in crypto is like a gambling addiction >cryptocurre…

There are lots of negative comments, yeah, but that almost seems like a reaction to articles on crypto constantly showing up on the frontpage. Just over the last few days there was an Eth article with 392 upvotes and a "cryptoeconomics" article with 100+, which isn't unusual. Within the last 24 hours there have been at least three positive Eth articles on the frontpage, it'd be hard to find any topic so thoroughly covered especially considering how the real-world reach of this stuff is almost strictly limited to how much Eth is worth.

Someone intentionally or not is doing a really good job of that.

Re: Bankers Ditch Fat Salaries to Chase Digital Currency Riches

#93

Post by discombobulate »

aaron-lebo wrote: post #92
SippinLean wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>the brigading/shilling here on HN is becoming quite annoying Can you point to a single post where the top, say, 5 comments aren't completely negative toward crypto as a whole? They typically mention gambling, fraud, ponzi schemes and (like yours) Mt Gox, in a rant that isn't specifically tied to the post at hand. Look at the top comments on this article: >Investing in crypto is like a gambling addiction >cryptocurre…

There are lots of negative comments, yeah, but that almost seems like a reaction to articles on crypto constantly showing up on the frontpage. Just over the last few days there was an Eth article with 392 upvotes and a "cryptoeconomics" article with 100+, which isn't unusual. Within the last 24 hours there have been at least three positive Eth articles on the frontpage, it'd be hard to find any topic so thoroughly co…

Occam's razor: Crypto tech works, & will be an incremental improvement to a number of areas.

Re: Bankers Ditch Fat Salaries to Chase Digital Currency Riches

#94

Post by simias »

VMG wrote: post #88
simias wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's true that bitcoin might be useful in very unstable countries (venezuela comes to mind) when you can't really trust fiat and getting access to dollars or other foreign currencies is trickier. It's still only really useful for relatively rich people who want to get money out or in, I doubt the average Venezuelian bothers with Bitcoin. And Bitcoin requires a widely available "free" internet connection to work corre…

> However I feel like we're having the bad engineer reflex, trying to find a technical solution to a societal issue and we might end up making things worse. Same is said for encryption. My perspective is that tools empowering individuals is the solution to societal problems. Cryptography does that, whether applied to communication or applied to value transfer.

Encryption has legitimate use cases even if you assume that you completely trust the "authorities" like your bank and your government. It's about preventing your neighbor from reading your email over wifi.

Monetary transactions are already pretty well protected, which makes it hard for somebody to steal my credit card and use it without my consent. It's arguably even safer than Bitcoin since the bank and regulations offer me some protection if something goes wrong.

So bitcoin isn't about making secure transactions the way HTTPS is, it's about hiding my transactions from the bank and, transitively, from the government. It's about creating a completely free libertarian market.

Maybe you actually want that but I wish there were more discussions in the bitcoin world about what model of society people really want. I have a hard time believing that all the bitcoin enthusiasts are die-hard objectivists. I feel like many people saw the "get rich quick" scheme and didn't stop to think about the consequences.

Re: Bankers Ditch Fat Salaries to Chase Digital Currency Riches

#95

Post by [deleted] »

aaron-lebo wrote: post #92
SippinLean wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>the brigading/shilling here on HN is becoming quite annoying Can you point to a single post where the top, say, 5 comments aren't completely negative toward crypto as a whole? They typically mention gambling, fraud, ponzi schemes and (like yours) Mt Gox, in a rant that isn't specifically tied to the post at hand. Look at the top comments on this article: >Investing in crypto is like a gambling addiction >cryptocurre…

There are lots of negative comments, yeah, but that almost seems like a reaction to articles on crypto constantly showing up on the frontpage. Just over the last few days there was an Eth article with 392 upvotes and a "cryptoeconomics" article with 100+, which isn't unusual. Within the last 24 hours there have been at least three positive Eth articles on the frontpage, it'd be hard to find any topic so thoroughly co…

[deleted]

Re: Bankers Ditch Fat Salaries to Chase Digital Currency Riches

#96

Post by Snackchez »

throwaway86328 wrote: post #81

Uh, isn't it also illegal to buy unlicensed securities? Couldn't the SEC also prosecute individuals who bought into obvious scams as unaccredited investors? IANAL, but securities fraud is securities fraud. Why even take the risk? Why, especially now, announce to the world that you're taking the risk like in the article?

https://www.sec.gov/news/press-release/2017-131

They've been warned, but what does that even mean?

Re: Bankers Ditch Fat Salaries to Chase Digital Currency Riches

#97

Post by richardknop »

SippinLean wrote: post #76
richardknop wrote: post #42

Investing in crypto is like a gambling addiction. I know some people who were paper millionaires based on their BTC during the days before Mt Gox collapse. They lost their entire savings once Mt Gox collapsed, since then they have spent years working hard to recover their savings and now they are investing all of it in ICOs. This won't end well. Seems to me like the story is repeating. On a side note, the brigading/s…

>the brigading/shilling here on HN is becoming quite annoying Can you point to a single post where the top, say, 5 comments aren't completely negative toward crypto as a whole? They typically mention gambling, fraud, ponzi schemes and (like yours) Mt Gox, in a rant that isn't specifically tied to the post at hand. Look at the top comments on this article: >Investing in crypto is like a gambling addiction >cryptocurre…

Many posts about Ethereum and ICOs getting upvoted quickly to the front page recently.

And reading them I have gotten impression of a lot of people invested in these technologies trying to irrationally argue for them.

Everybody skeptical does not understand the potential of smart contracts which are just like internet in the 80s/early 90s and will take over the world.

I think skeptical replies are a natural push back against this recent wave.

Re: Bankers Ditch Fat Salaries to Chase Digital Currency Riches

#98

Post by lambdadmitry »

FLUX-YOU wrote: post #48
lambdadmitry wrote: post #20

Above all, I feel sorry for the small guy. Sure, ICOers are raising money for their dreams . And the "whales" "investing" in those ICOs are mostly lucky tech-ish folks who behave irrationally (like investing-1/4th-of-Whatsapp-in-a-service-with-a-few-hundred-users-irrationally). Whales will not suffer much in the end and ICOers will drive their Ferraris. It's those who believed in "invest in cryptocurrencies" hype in…

That's pretty much what banks were doing with tech IPOs anyway (maybe other IPOs?).

Banks usually don't go underwater. If you "invest" in your savings account, you will never loose your money, whatever the bank does with their shares portfolio (save the total system collapse).

BTC:USD doesn't work like that.

Re: Bankers Ditch Fat Salaries to Chase Digital Currency Riches

#99

Post by richardknop »

discombobulate wrote: post #93
aaron-lebo wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are lots of negative comments, yeah, but that almost seems like a reaction to articles on crypto constantly showing up on the frontpage. Just over the last few days there was an Eth article with 392 upvotes and a "cryptoeconomics" article with 100+, which isn't unusual. Within the last 24 hours there have been at least three positive Eth articles on the frontpage, it'd be hard to find any topic so thoroughly co…

Occam's razor: Crypto tech works, & will be an incremental improvement to a number of areas.

Yes but that is completely unrelated to price of these tokens which is driven by speculation and has nothing to do with tech.

I believe blockchain will be implemented by industries where it is useful and can improve many processes.

Re: Bankers Ditch Fat Salaries to Chase Digital Currency Riches

#100

Post by throwaway86328 »

Snackchez wrote: post #96
throwaway86328 wrote: post #81

Uh, isn't it also illegal to buy unlicensed securities? Couldn't the SEC also prosecute individuals who bought into obvious scams as unaccredited investors? IANAL, but securities fraud is securities fraud. Why even take the risk? Why, especially now, announce to the world that you're taking the risk like in the article?

https://www.sec.gov/news/press-release/2017-131 They've been warned, but what does that even mean?

IANAL, but I interpret it to mean that both buyers and sellers are responsible for understanding what they're transacting, which are likely securities.

Unlicensed securities that are not exempt from the law are illegal to buy or sell.

The implications seem clear to me. Again, IANAL, but a lot of people seem to be commiting felonies, even if they don't know it yet. These ICOs can ruin the lives of more than just the owners.

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