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Comment by cwperkins | Hacker News Reader

There's pretty sound reasons why non-accredited investors can only invest in public tradable assets. Accredited investors can get into non-public companies if they earn a high enough income such that they can take that kind of volatility. For students fresh out of college that should focus on saving, it is not a great idea to throw those savings into non-public startups. It sure sounds tempting, but many times over has been shown to be the most risky asset class.

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People should be allowed to make risky investments if they want, especially if they keep that risk to a small percentage of their portfolio. Besides, the lotto and casinos exist and are still allowed in most places, which is basically what you're leaving these people to do (and what I've seen many younger people waste their money instead).

Isn't it this very website where people over and over again say that the best time to take a risk is when you're young, anyway, and don't have any responsibilities?

There's a difference between risky investments and outright scams, though, and I'm fine if the government steps in and stops the scams, although I worry that they'll start seeing every single ICO as a scam and want to stop all of them (to be fair, it almost seems like they all are right now to me as well).

That's one of the nice things about the rise of cryptocurrencies, actually, is it's allowed younger people to make bets that have wildly paid off for them, that would otherwise not been available to them. It was risky as hell for sure, but for those people that only put in what they could afford to lose, it's outperformed every other investment by many many times this past year.

People can already make a risky investment, by just buying public stock on the public markets.

So there's no reason why they shouldn't be able to make other risky investments, right?

Public companies have strict auditing rules, and other controls that prevent insiders, or a small group of people colluding with insiders from ripping off other investors.

This is not the case with private firms, and doubly-so for ICOs.

There's risky investments, and there's walking around the bad part of town after dark, wearing a blindfold, with two wallets in each hand, hoping you'll find a winning lottery ticket on the ground.

The regulations are more about regulating the ability to make money off of naive investors, in my view. You should be able to offer the ability to make risky investments to people, but there should be enforcement mechanisms to ensure you're not misleading people.

People really dont understand how accesisble buying crypto is in comparison to typical asset classes, specially outside the U.S.

To open a brokerage account in argentina, you have to physically go to an office to sign up, and pay thousands of dollars upfront to just open an account.

Banks are also a hassle to open an account at, since they charge you 20-50U$S a month plus comission charges are in the 4-5% on funds.

Bitcoin was great because it was also an easy way to receive funds as a kid (circa 2010).

Not being regulated has been the greatest advantage to the crypto market.

It could be argued that a student has lots of earning potential left in their life, so their risk tolerance is actually higher than someone, say, near retirement on a fixed income.

I get what you are saying though. For most people it is not an appropriate investment, hence the accredited investor rules.

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