Many of Madoff's victims exaggerated their loses. If they invested $1MM at a claimed return of 15% for 6 years, they would claim they lost $2MM, not the $1MM principal.
(I just hope our Government doesn't try to bail out crypto speculators!)
To be fair there’s something to that idea. Market returns about 7% on average. Over six years that would be an opportunity cost of 50%.
But, as you say there’s got to be some loss for choosing to put one’s money with a con artist
I doubt there will be a crypto bailout as it seemingly didn’t get big enough to blow up anything outside itself. It also had an anti public relations campaign for years
I must admit, I don't have a lot of sympathy for Madoff's victims. Especially the charities! If I donate money to a charity, I'd expect the money to go to help people or to further their cause -- not to be invested in a high-risk ponzi scheme.
> In 1992, Bernard Madoff explained his purported strategy to The Wall Street Journal. He said his returns were really nothing special, given that the Standard & Poors 500-stock index generated an average annual return of 16.3% between November 1982 and November 1992. "I would be surprised if anybody thought that matching the S&P over 10 years was anything outstanding." The majority of money managers actually trailed the S&P 500 during the 1980s.
From https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madoff_investment_scandal
If politicians wanted to make crypto bros whole, I would lose my mind. I doubt I am the only one, and I would hope that would be scene as a political death sentence to endorse such a proposition.
https://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/stories/2001/07/30/daily...
(I was opposed to this. I purposely didn't exercise stock options that I couldn't or wouldn't sell immediately because I knew about the tax liability. I don't believe the defense that someone who wants to speculate in stock options just didn't know about the taxes. People who wish to speculate with complicated forms of investors should be prepared to take all the risk.)