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Comment by wpietri | Hacker News Reader

I think there are a few kinds of hurt here.

There are people who have paper losses. Losing something you never had feels bad, but it's not an actual injury.

There are people who put real money into a completely unregulated financial instrument via a completely unregulated financial company named after a trading-card game. Hopefully they took the advice that's in the first chapter of any book on money management and didn't bet more than they could afford to lose. If so, then there's no hurt.

There are the people who had no clue and took a bath. They did get hurt, and I feel bad for them, but they are incidental to the drama.

Then there are a lot of people who have been hyping BitCoin to the skies. Where they got hurt is in their egos. There, I think adding insult to injury is richly deserved. They are the people who led the clueless into this, so fuck them.

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Point stands that are people who, for whatever reason, had assets on Gox. And they got hurt real bad. Although people have been trying to warn everybody off Gox FOR THE LAST FUCKING 3 YEARS, they still got there.

And insulting people who just lost real money in whatever fashion. It's just not considerate. But, if Charlie had been there, the last 3 years, warning people off gox, well, I would emphasize. BUT HE HASN'T. Stross the dickwipe wasn't there, trying to wean people off Gox. He has only opened his piehole today, because it's the hip talk of today. It's shameful and illconsiderate. It's also showing an astounding lack of empathy as to be basically psychopathic.

Stross is a walking talking psychopathic incident waiting to happen.

How much did you lose? I'm sorry you got burnt, but in the end, maybe it helps to think of the BTC and money inside that wallet as never having existed in the first place. After all, it never was possible to withdraw all of it in Dollars, so it really wasn't the equivalent money.

He has been warning about BTC in general and there are many, mainly speculative, aspects of Bitcoin that are prone to people getting burnt.

To very many people, this is no surpise. At this point, these people are quite grumpy for having been laughed at by some members of the Bitcoin community.

I didn't lose any on Gox, I've been warning people off gox since 2011, and more often since late 2012. Everybody who didn't have his head stuck in the sand saw this one coming from a lightyear away.

But that doesn't mean you should insult the people who did get hurt by gox. They lost $55m in fiat and 770kbtc (around $0.5b). They're in a bad place right now, and they're gonna learn their lesson without pissing from on high.

If people had sufficient assets on MtGox to get "hurt real bad" then they were, bluntly, fools. That doesn't mean we can't have sympathy for them. But neither should we tip-toe around their feelings.

But Stross's words aren't mainly directed at them. They're directed at MtGox, and the many people hyping BitCoin and waving away any need for regulation. And you know what? Those people deserve mockery. The MtGox people lost and/or stole the money. And the BitCoin fanboys created the shangri-la atmosphere that tempted a lot of fools in.

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