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Comment by akozak | Hacker News Reader

I would agree if there were no externalities, but those nerds are paying celebs to advertise crypto to the masses as an investment (soon Fidelity will help people put 20% of their 401k into bitcoin - seems bad) and we are adding GW to the grid y/y.

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Have you considered Fidelity has done more research and knows more about Bitcoin than you? Your judgement that it just “seems bad” is rather shallow when it’s being leveled at a decision made by one of the largest asset managers in the world.

It's just as shallow (unless you're a Fidelity insider) to assume they went through a rational process and have a strong legal argument that they're upholding their fiduciary duty to account holders. Big companies make dumb decisions all the time, and financial companies especially when there's money on the table. So far Fidelity seems to be standing alone with this move. Putting 20% of your 401k into bitcoin as a regular person just seems so obviously unwise to me, and the US Dept of Labor seems to agree, so I'll stick by my comment and priors until I see more first-order evidence.

Having Fidelity support Bitcoin, Dogecoin or Ethereum is about as difficult and expensive for them as supporting a new stock or commodity exchange, and about as risky... as long as they don't act as a market maker. They'll almost certainly make money on fees.

Meanwhile they get the marketing value. They spend over $100MM annually on advertising (by way of a quick googling, I have no special insight) so it seems reasonable that they like being talked about, especially by people who might otherwise be avoiding them.

I am completely into crypto for 10 years already, I haven't seen one celebrity advertising anything to me. Maybe crypto isn't the problem here?

edit: I don't watch TV and use adblocker (both of which I recommend).

Matt Damon famously shilled for crypto.com.

It's moreso the NFTs, which a ton of celebrities promoted as a get-rich-quick scheme.

Jimmy Fallon became a meme for his awkward endorsement of his Bored Ape: https://twitter.com/FallonTonight/status/1485843736345161737

Kim Kardashian, Matt Damon, Jamie Foxx, Mike Tyson, Tom Brady, Michael Owen (2000s English footballer). Crypto should be regulated by the SEC at this point. Real people are losing real savings.

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