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The whole point of critics celebrating the inevitable crash is to try and prevent more people being drawn into the bullshit. Yes, there will be other opportunities for people to be swindled, but that's kinda beside the point.

The classic hedge against inflation is stuff with indisputable value, aka commodities. Second-best is real-estate, since the time frame for that "Greater Fool" situation plays out over approximately a lifetime. Critics are super angry that people are being swindled into throwing their money into crypto in much the same way that critics are super angry that people get swindled into throwing their money into lotto tickets.

Has absolutely fuck-all to do with "moral objection" or "buying a GPU," and 100% to do with not wanting to see people pouring MORE of their life savings down the drain for the benefit of assholes playing media-campaign pump-and-dump games. The sooner it crashes and burns, the sooner we can hope to prevent more pointless financial deaths.

> The classic hedge against inflation is stuff with indisputable value, aka commodities. Second-best is real-estate

Pray tell then, should retail workers buy bars of gold, or mansions?

> Critics are super angry that people are being swindled into throwing their money into crypto

On HN, critics are super angry that many people got rich for doing things they didn't do themselves, because they consider such things swindle/morally bad etc.

> The sooner it crashes and burns, the sooner we can hope to prevent more pointless financial deaths

The only problem with this argument is that you are certain it's going to fail/crash/burn. What if it doesn't?

As I can't predict the future, I consider the chances of failures are not 100%. Actually, I believe the chances of success may be closer to 50/50.

Should crypto not fail, I wonder how people who celebrated the prior crashes will feel? Maybe they will just rationalize all that away, as most people don't seem to have too much of a conscience.

Personally, I prefer to avoid such conundrums altogether: my way is to not wish failure and to not rejoice in the crashes of even those things I disagree with: "live and let live".

But almost nobody believes they are evil or doing bad things, so I'm sure it a-ok to celebrate the crash because "The sooner the 100% guaranteed crash and burn happens, the better", right?

> Pray tell then, should retail workers buy bars of gold, or mansions?

Sadly, retail workers are super hosed by inflation as they don’t have much to invest. But if they did, they could just buy a commodity ETF.

It’s been really funny to talk with friends who are “discovering” financial instruments through crypto like they don’t exist in the real world.

Pretty much everything is available to the retail investor and is much easier to buy than crypto. So a wage worker is better off buying $50 of a vanguard fund than $50 in some shitcoin or etf.

No one is 100% certain and I expect one crypto will make it because we need digital cash. But it shouldn’t increase in value and isn’t a good investment. Just like investing in dollars and putting them in your mattress is stupid, the winning currency will be stupid to hodl.

Just like people do win the lottery, people will make money off crypto in the long run. But most people will not as there’s nothing of fundamental value. That commodity etf at its heart is concentrated orange juice, or something real that can be sold and people demand. There’s nothing at the heart of crypto.

You're implying most "working class retail job" people got into crypto as an inflation hedge and not because of the non-stop in your face FOMO propaganda about how rich they could get? And that no inflation hedges existed for these people besides sinking their life savings into crypto?

This site and social media in general has been filled to the brim with warnings that people were going to be conned out of their savings for years now but thanks for your sanctimonious post.

Critics have been vocal this is a ponzi scheme. Warnings were all over the place, but the "have fun staying poor" crowd did not want to listen.

Critics are not responsible for the losses. All of the lost money went to those who got returns on their crypto gambling and scams.

> I think the most horrible is when techies celebrate a crash, without thinking about the middle class/lower class people who may have lost their life savings

I absolutely loathe this article, but you have a point. It seems unseemly to engage in schadenfreude against gullible retail investors, many of which are legitimate victims. This point is not really related to the arguments put forth by the article itself, but it still seems like a point that should be made here.

I know a lot of younger people in their 20s that got into crypto. I warned all of them, repeatedly, and at length.

I’m fairly skilled at making a compelling, cohesive, and even entertaining argument.

I had no effect on any of them.

Luckily, they were all playing with pocket-money amounts. A few hundred dollars or a few thousand at most.

So this crash has done them no real harm and taught them all a valuable lesson. It’s something every generation goes through.

Why can’t I be entertained by it also?

> So this crash has done them no real harm and taught them all a valuable lesson. It’s something every generation goes through. Why can’t I be entertained by it also?

That also seems fine, provided you draw the distinction. (I don't claim to be any kind of arbiter of taste, but you asked, so I answered.)

Have you looked through the responses to the meltdown of Celsius on Twitter? In many individual cases these appear to be ordinary people, in shock at having lost practically everything. All I'm saying is that laughing at people like that seems to me to be in very poor taste.

Michael Saylor and his ilk are definitely fair game, though. Just be sure to leave some Schadenfreude for me!

> lost practically everything

Which is absolutely terrible and no laughing matter.

I’ve heard that there has been an uptick in suicides.

As an anecdotal data point, my neighbour killed himself recently — he was working (solo) on a crypto startup.

> I’ve heard that there has been an uptick in suicides.

I expect it to get worse before it gets better. I imagine that people in this situation are typically overwhelmed by the shame.

I would also venture to guess that specimens like Michael Saylor don't feel any shame whatsoever, despite making statements about Bitcoin intended to convince ordinary retail investors to go all in at the height of the bubble:

https://twitter.com/ClarityToast/status/1536315025278763008

You can have schadenfreude at Bernie Madoff getting caught and still sympathize and/or empathize with his many, many victims.

> You can have schadenfreude at Bernie Madoff getting caught and still sympathize and/or empathize with his many, many victims.

Exactly. Madoff's crimes were despicable because of the way that they hurt individuals and families. The situation with crypto is potentially quite a lot worse than that was. And not just because of the overall scale.

Many individual retailer investors will never recover. This has the potential to do a great deal of damage to the fabric of society.

I've spent years telling people that cryptocurrencies are a bubble that rely on Greater Fools, and some day you run out of fools.

Sadly, some friends of the family became massive believers, and have lost a lot of money, I'm not celebrating that at all.

Video game addiction. More serious than anyone thought.

> what else exactly do you think they could do

It’s always someone else’s fault isn’t it? Everyone’s against us is the marching cry of the populist cause.