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Comment by JeremyNT | Hacker News Reader

OK, now you're moving from the realm of genuine curiosity and into the realm of victim blaming.

Before the collapse, FTX and crypto had a veneer of respectability. They had ads everywhere and the mainstream press treated them like legitimate financial investments.

The failure here isn't of the individuals who get suckered with crypto bullshit, it's a failure in our ability to regulate and tamp down that kind of crap. Shame on the press, government institutions, and of course tech sector VCs, for either shilling for, investing in, or looking the other way while these frauds were taking people to the cleaners.

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I talked to a lot of people at the time. You could say things like:

* There is no free money. Why would there be free money?

* It isn't FDIC insured. Look, it is a lie

* It has ponzi economics, etc

And it would get hand waved away. Agree that authorities dropped the ball, but the way a good con works is the mark wants to get conned, they want to believe there is something too good to be true.

This is not aimed at OP, who opened up, admonished themself, etc.

Yes, it often boils down to recognizing that "this person is telling me what I want to hear" because we're very vulnerable to that.

The world is full of liars, something one learns as one gets older.

> Yes, it often boils down to recognizing that "this person is telling me what I want to hear" because we're very vulnerable to that.

This also explains all the hype and starry eyes for LLMs.

And yet the top comment here starts with:

> I sincerely hope that I never meet Sam Bankman Fried, because if I did I do not know what I would do but it certainly wouldn't be legal.

Why is this statement not condemned? Of course it's terrible that SBF was a fraud. But insinuating that physical harm is justified is just not ok. They were the naïve ones who bought into the BS, waived away all the warning voices, and now they are threating violence? Not ok.

I was engaging in a bit of hyperbole because I very much dislike SBF. I wouldn’t actually hurt him if I met him in person, but even if I would, I find it exceedingly unlikely that I will meet him in person, so it’s really a non-issue regardless. It would be kind of cool if he stubbed his toe or something on my behalf those though.

I feel like you know this, and you’re pretending to not understand this to take some moral high-ground.

> There is no free money. Why would there be free money?

When interest rate is below inflation, we do have free money, it's just not for everyone.

> The failure here isn't of the individuals

Nope, the failure is of the individuals. Sure, regulators deserve some of the blame but nobody forced the individuals to put their money into such ridiculous schemes.

When the "victim" was planning to grab free money at the expanse of the next guy in the ponzi scheme, I think it's fair enough to blame them.

I didn’t know it was a Ponzi scheme. I thought they were using GUSD as collateral for high-interest loans.

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