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Comment by cjbenedikt | Hacker News Reader

People lost a lot of money (some all of it) in the dot.com bubble. Despite all those stocks and IPOs being "regulated". And in that case those stockes were heavily peddled by well known brokers or advisors (not the case in ICOs yet). Does it feel better if you lose your money in a "regulated" way? Can you recover it? When $65b disappeared thanks to Madoff the SEC looked the other way (or not at all, rather). His company was "regulated" too. But you cannot even sue the SEC...Regulation adds costs for lawyers, auditors, brokers and the exchange. But it doesn't prevent you from losing it - as the dot.com bubble demonstrated.

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The "f* the system" mentality of crypto enthusiasts is —albeit somewhat warranted—often over the top and slightly annoying. Madoff was arrested and is serving life in prison. What more do you want?

I think people want their investments and life savings back, that would be nice.

At the end of the day, your money isn't insured just because the SEC is regulating a market. And the overall point is that regulation at the end of the day does not equate to safety and no risk.

I want less fees so I can increase my profit margin, some are doing fraud in cryptocurrency which is bad but as MtGox fiasco has shown this free market with more freedom than traditional markets is self-correcting

Money back perhaps...???

The point of regulation isn't too prevent you from losing money, it's to prevent some common forms of fraud.

Like Madoff...???

Pointing out examples of people breaking the law, getting caught, and going to jail for it is not a good argument against having the law in place.

I mean, do you point at an example of someone committing murder, getting arrested, and going to jail for life as a reason that we shouldn't have laws against murder, since clearly people still murder anyway?

Madoff is serving a life sentence in prison and forfeited billions. He didn't get off scot-free in any way.

Precisely. The argument is that they are less common due to regulation (not that they cease to exist entirely).

This example proves tdb's point, not yours. The SEC did its job, which was sending Madoff to jail. Its job was not to make everyone's money come back and redistribute it.

Actually - the SEC didn't do its job at all:https://www.reuters.com/article/us-madoff-sec/victims-of-mad...

Or to make it more difficult to compete, depending on your word view...

"Competing" through fraud subverts the free market.

Yes. Some degree of SEC regulation would definitely be 'better' in almost every way.

When companies are forthcoming in their public statements - then equity buyers on the hook for for their greed.

With ICO's - it's just open to any kind of scamminess by anyone and everyone - and so we can basically be guaranteed that this is going to happen.

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