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Comment by reducesuffering | Hacker News Reader

No I don't think it's poor form. If we had a forum full of people talking about how great Facebook is, and when forced to disclose their $FB holdings, realize everyone is holding $100,000+ of $FB, we might realize we have skin in the game to talk it up instead of objectively evaluating it. Big difference in incentives between $10 and $100,000.

Stake 0.05 BTC, 1.2 ETH

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Image you were in a forum with people who claimed to believe that Facebook was great, but none of them had invested in it. Wouldn't that make you doubt the sincerity of their position?

It'd be a bad idea to only listen to opinions from people who won't put their money where their mouth is. If anything, objectively analysing something is much more important to those who have stake than those who do not.

Imagine a world where you can’t argue about anything without disclosing the exact amount of stake you have in it.

Skin in the game works both ways. FOMO is a real thing.

Your comment is funny because in many countries all people that talk in a national assembly need to disclose their stakes. So yes I can imagine it, because a lot of parliaments work exactly like that.

And I am not sure what "both ways" means but of course you have to disclose if you have taken a short position in the matter.

People who talk in a National Assembly have real influence on laws so conflict of interest is a real problem.

If the chair of the SEC comes out for or against crypto (or any financial product) of course we should know what investments he holds.

We’re arguing about a subject on a message board. It’s not going to have any influence whatsoever on the price or whether it fails or not.

I would hate to have to disclose the exact amount of Toyota stock I own anytime I argue with someone the merits of Toyota over Ford or Honda.

You don’t have to. However, TFA explicitly asked you for this discussion. You’re free to join the thousands of other discussions where there’s no ask to disclose stake. There’s value in one that does.

I haven’t made a case either for or against crypto either way in this thread, except to state that I have some crypto.

There might be value in a discussion that asks for disclosure. I’m not sure this discussion is working as intended though, judging the amounts of disclosures in the comments. Just an observation.

You do know that ethical journalists talking about stocks disclose if they are long or short on that stock, in the article they're writing, right?

We’re not journalists. We’re discussing a subject on a message board.

Besides, my original position was that it was bad form to ask for the exact amount of crypto someone holds.

I don’t ask for the exact amount of stock someone holds in Tesla when they are talking about how great Tesla is.

But Tesla is not a multi-level marketing scheme.

But yes, maybe it would be better to say "none", "a bit", or "my retirement depends on it". (or whatever scale you want to use)

Just because you're not a journalist doesn't mean you can't be ethical.

> Just because you're not a journalist doesn't mean you can't be ethical.

I think this is my favourite HN comment of the year so far!

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