When you get mugged you have no choice on what is happening. The actions are being forced physically on you. With FTX We chose to go that way so it somehow feels like we are as much to blame as SBF (and to be honest, we are).
Especially when prior to FTX's collapse, numerous other crypto exchanges were turning out to be scams or going under, and even back then there was plenty of evidence that crypto was being used and manipulated by nation-states and criminal organizations? And it was practically a meme that crypto was full of shysters and scams?
Comparing putting your money into a too-good-to-be-true crypto hedge fund is nothing like "a bank manager stealing money to pay off his gambling debts." I won't name a culpability breakdown but there is no way you have 0% responsibility here.
US ones are. Shady ass casinos in the Bahamas like what SBF was running aren't though. Exchanges like Coinbase have been operating in the US under heavy US regulations for over a decade, and have never had anything close to a solvency issue. It's absolutely ridiculous that SBF was getting invited to basically write US policy despite FTX not even being a US based exchange.
If I invested it in crypto? I would value it at zero for the rest of eternity.
What is strange about it? Losing money through investment risk is part of the deal when you invest, losing money because the fund manager decides to steal it is not part of the deal.
But there is still a difference between risk and fraud.
Risk would be if joe random tells you he'll "invest" your money in lottery tickets and then give you a 10% return if he wins or nothing if the "investment" goes bad.
Fraud is when he tells you that, but takes your money and buys himself some stuff.
Either way you lost all your money but in the second case you can sue the guy for fraud. In the first case he did as promised and lost the money but you only have yourself to blame for doing a dumb investment.
That's not the whole picture though. If I invest in some risky stock (or even what I thought was not a risky one) and it tanks, sure I feel bad but it's part of the deal so it's ok.
But if I invest in something risky and I lose the money not through investment risk but simply because the fund manager outright stole my money, I'd be very angry.
Not literally true - completely innocent people do get victimized - but there’s certainly a reason for the expression.
I'm starting to think that these organizations need to be regulated as banks, stat.
Banks have steadily become less and less fraudulent over the last century.
Crypto exchanges have also steadily become less fraudulent, but still carry a much larger risk than the financial institutions to which people have become accustomed.
That is what a lot of people have been saying for a very long time now!
I don't mean this in a way to blame the victims of the crypto fraudsters, merely to explain the somewhat exasperated responses by people who feel like they've been trying to warn people who have been ignoring them.
> I'm starting to think that these organizations need to be regulated as banks, stat.
I mean, why do you think they don't want to be regulated and brag that they aren't? To make you more money?