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Comment by xur17 | Hacker News Reader

Because people want to and decided the risk was worth it to them? If a consenting adult wants to deposit their money into a system that they have full visibility into, why should we stop them?

> This is how crypto operates. Buyer beware.

This statement rings very true for me, and perhaps is the bit we agree on. With crypto there is no "oversight" that blocks you from depositing your funds into unsafe contracts, etc. It's up to you as the user to do your own research before depositing funds.

There are many projects within crypto that ARE well built, and have been carefully tested, analyzed, slowly released to the public, etc. I like having the ability to make this choice myself instead of relying on some gatekeeper to decide what I can do with my money (cough "accredited investor rules").

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> If a consenting adult wants to deposit their money into a system that they have full visibility into, why should we stop them?

We already do exactly that, e.g. Accredited Investor.

Yes but should we do it? Those rules prevent most people from e.g. investing into startups.

To state it directly, the vast majority of the population doesn’t have the capability of assessing risk in speculative investments and is disproportionately susceptible to fraud. You give the example of “investing in startups” without also describing that most startups fail.

i understand why we might want to dissuade speculative investments, byt why is it the state's role to prevent citizens from speculating?

It’s not a perfect analogy but it’s the same reason we have laws that require seatbelts. In theory this impinges on the liberty of adults, but in practice the it obviously saves lives.

When people commit harm to themselves out of ignorance, I think it’s reasonable for a government to step in.

Note that I think it’s reasonable to fundamentally disagree from a libertarian standpoint but I don’t see many reasonable people arguing against seatbelt laws.

> It’s not a perfect analogy but it’s the same reason we have laws that require seatbelts. In theory this impinges on the liberty of adults, but in practice the it obviously saves lives.

At the risk of going off-topic, I think that seatbelts isn't a good analogy because I don't think we require seat belts to protect people from themselves. It is to protect other people. When you are unbelted, it is far more difficult to maintain control of your vehicle when things start to get even a little bit exciting. You can't worry much about car control when you're getting tossed out of your seat.

I would say helmet laws are a closer analogy, because AFAICT that is almost entirely about protecting people from themselves.

even from a utilitarian stance, the tradeoff for making the system "safer" is that investors miss opportunities that they see but can't take.

something is wrong when you can only buy virgin galactic, not spacex, because of burdensome regulations. the gap between the haves and have nots widen as you must be an accredited investor to buy the biggest winners this decade.

something is wrong when you can buy penny stocks, but experimental defi products exclude the us market because of regulatory concerns. the latter is much more transparent than the former.

Personally, I think we should allow individuals to take a short, inexpensive (free would be nice) class that would grant them Accredited Investor status.

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