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Comment by arealaccount | Hacker News Reader

“Everyone’s freaking out — like, ‘I lost my life savings,’” said Mr. Collins, who founded Tether with Mr. Pierce and now runs a crypto venture called BLOCKv. “That’s a tragedy, but it’s just as much of a tragedy when someone says, ‘I went to a casino and lost my life savings.’ But that doesn’t mean let’s regulate casinos out of existence.”

Do people in the crypto game generally acknowledge that they’re gambling? I always thought they considered it “investments”

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My understanding on the crypto market drivers here is:

1. It’s 100% a “gamble” totally driven by momentum in almost all these coin cases (the value is convincing someone else there is value). All self-aware crypto investors know this.

2. When the monetary value is convincing others there is monetary value, no one holding bags will call it a gamble. They’ll call it an investment, a hedge, the arguments change, “diamond hands, everyone hold together” is the rallying cry because the only monetary value is convincing others to believe the value. GME is a similar scenario ie overvalued based on its fundamentals and the spread with its book value and price is purely “convincing others to hold and push it up”.

It’s iterations of Ponzi schemes all the way down.

I still own crypto (I’m betting the Ponzi scheme keeps rolling and I want the upside of that too)

I was much more libertarian when I was younger. Drugs are a good example. I always thought people should be free to do whatever they want. I feel that way about myself, certainly, and don't feel bound by any drug laws - not that I use drugs, but if I wanted to the law wouldn't bother me. Over time though I've lived in places where drugs practically are legal and the consequences - homeless, petty crime, public drug use, overdose deaths, etc seem less than ideal.

Nowadays I feel less libertarian and more confused. What is the social benefit of allowing gambling addicts to bankrupt themselves? Why do we allow that? I like to gamble now and again, and think I should be allowed to, but...

Yep, I'm with you. I'm generally pretty loose on letting people enjoy their vices, but I think it's also reasonable for society to protect people who might be preyed upon by others through their vices.

For example, heroin is notoriously destructive and addictive. I'm cool with outlawing it. But something like marijuana is not nearly as destructive and addictive, so I'd rather legalize it.

Gambling can be addictive, but people enjoy it, so it should be legal. However, I think it's appropriate to ban certain predatory gambling practices.

You can legalize drugs and not let losers camp on public property and openly operate bike chop shops. The states that legalize drugs just happen to be the states that let human garbage … garbage up the city. I don’t think there’s a causal link.

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