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Comment by seibelj | Hacker News Reader

The wise among us will put their wealth in index funds. The less wise may dabble in options and stock picking. The foolish may buy BTC and ETH. But not everyone who picks stocks and not everyone who bought BTC were foolish. And this is why letting me gamble my money on stocks, options, and crypto (or the casino) is not illegal.

I wouldn’t be opposed to forcing everyone who wants to buy crypto to sign a letter saying (paraphrased) “I’m an idiot and if I lose everything I deserve it”. I’d rather you let the individual gamble rather than ban all speculation and risky endeavors.

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I'm all for the free market and personal accountability, but there should be some safety measures in place to protect the most vulnerable, naive, etc from being destroyed financially by adverse selection.

Schwab or Ameritrade won't just let you trade forex and commodities futures, futures options, and stock/etf options unless the application has been reviewed and the investor discloses they know the risk. It should be the same for crypto IMHO.

Crypto is just gambling now.

Every day I'm watching my coworker spend all his "the boss is not around" time looking at the black screen of the Binance charts. It's sick.

He'll get tired of it or lose all his money, whichever comes first.

This is really the same argument as "let's legalize heroin, as long as you sign a form saying you know what you're doing."

Maybe that's not a problem for you.

I am a freedom-oriented person. This includes legalizing LBGTQ marriages, interracial marriages, and enabling adults of solid mental state to ingest substances of their choosing.

If all drugs were legal and freely available, why would people even choose to take heroin, if they're not already addicted.

not everyone is a perfectly rational actor or in a sane mental state

Because the problem is not the access to drugs. Sure, it's illegal, but you can find weed, heroin, cocaine, lsd, shrooms, anything you want provided you know the right sellers.

Only heroin is in the sweet spot of strong kick, immense pain relief and extremely cheap. People take cheap drugs because they're poor, not because they don't want to get their hands on pure colombian coke.

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