Hacker News Reader

Comment by ASpaceCowboi | Hacker News Reader

> Roy started spending all his time watching YouTube videos and speaking to other cryptocurrency enthusiasts in private groups on the messaging app Telegram.

So I don't really get this article. Let's take out the human psychological factor such as addiction and gambling for a second.

Similar things can be said to traditional stock crash as well, can it not? Before the 'crypto-mania', the amateur investors would read a few posts/websites or gain influence from what their friends/peers/social groups would recite about [insert certain stock] and when it crashed, this is the same cycle.

My point is without actually spending time conducting deeper research and really understanding the technology(topic), this is will happen to anyone(amateurs).

Would love to hear others' opinions on this.

View on HN

Crypto’s “improvements” over traditional stocks include:

* lack of regulation comes with lack of enforcement of rules as well. If you get ripped out, there’s no one that can help you, that is by design.

* cult-like behaviour and manipulation. Crypto users are lured into forums that use their own language and memes (“line goes up”), there’s a strong dense of “us” versus “the rest”, commenting isolation. Celebrities and influencers are paid to promote. People in these groups start following “advice” and end up “having to buy in”… and then the head of the pyramid cashes out, and they are left without anything.

I’m not saying this kind of thing doesn’t happen in traditional finance, but crypto has taken it to the next level.

> My point is without actually spending time conducting deeper research and really understanding the technology(topic), this is will happen to anyone(amateurs).

I don't know if that's true. Most amateurs I know who invested in the stock market are relatively okay. They didn't i) put their entire life savings into it cause they didn't believe it was going to be the future of the world due to some weird cult-like behavior and ii) stocks didn't collapse 99% or whatever a lot of these shitcoins did. Most amateurs don't make money in stocks but they aren't wiped out either.

Well, sure humans are like that. But at least with stocks there’s some societal benefits (e.g., the money Google has raised via equity sales has been used to make the worlds best search engine).

With crypto, people are wasting their time in things that don’t help the real economy so it stings a little bit more.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com