Software Engineer Loses Life Savings in Quadriga Imbroglio (bloomberg.com) 358
Tong Zou wasn't a stereotypical crypto bro bent on accumulating flashy trophies such as Lamborghinis when he deposited his life savings into Quadriga CX's digital exchange. The 30-year-old software engineer, who'd been working in California for seven years, just wanted to save a few bucks on transfer fees after deciding to move to Vancouver. It proved to be a C$560,000 ($422,000) mistake. From a report: "It's all my savings, so I'm just living on what little I have left and trying to start over," Zou said in a phone interview Friday from Vancouver, where he has been living out of an AirBnB for the past month. "It pretty much took everything away from me." Zou is one of Quadriga's 115,000 clients who are out of luck after the sudden death of the firm's founder left C$190 million in cryptocurrencies protected by his passwords unretrievable. The exchange has halted operations and was granted protection from creditors on Feb. 5 in Nova Scotia Supreme Court in Halifax.
hmm (Score:2)
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I'd like to know where someone acquired tinfoil in 2019 and why we aren't talking about time travel.
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Some kids at MIT, motivated by "a desire to play with some expensive equipment", tested this out.
Aluminum foil hats actually amplified radio signals at some frequencies.
Tin foil hats did not.
So if you want to keep the mind control rays out of your head, make sure you always pop for real tin foil.
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Purely Devil's Advocate here, because I have no skin in the game.
The death certificate is from India. Say you're a shady guy in control of millions in cryptocurrency and you want to abscond with it ... how much will it cost you to buy that death certificate in India?
Is there a DNA tested body to prove this?
Lots about this sounds utterly sketchy to me, not the least of which is why this company was deemed to be trustworthy e
Diversify your investment portfolio (Score:5, Insightful)
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There's also this thing we saw in 2008 where a bunch of "financial innovation" was happening. Apparently "financial innovation" is just getting around all the safety rails the regulators put up so shit like this doesn't happen.
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Sometimes even incredibly intelligent people are capable of horrible foolishness.
Intelligence and wisdom are not the same thing. I'm not sure there's even a strong correlation between the two.
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It doesn't matter what you're doing, but there is an old saying about not keeping all of your eggs in one basket. Sometimes even incredibly intelligent people are capable of horrible foolishness.
Yea, I've done some stupid stuff with my money too. This guy learned his lesson I suppose, shame about the money he lost, but as the saying goes, "A fool and his money are soon parted" to which I add, "especially for greedy fools." I suppose it could have been worse, he could have sunk it into cash and moved it that way. I don't feel too sorry for him, he took his chances and lost on a really strange turn of events.
When you take your chances to avoid a couple of bucks of fees, you MIGHT want to consider a
He didn't say "investment" (Score:5, Insightful)
That's right but not relevant here. He wasn't do that not as an investment
It's incredibly relevant - he literally took all his eggs (money) and put them in one basket (Enquadrdriofomaligo or whatever it was called).
It doesn't matter if the purpose was investment or short term transfer.
Same reason why when traveling you would not get a bunch of travelers checks and keep them all in the same place. (not that anyone uses travelers checks anymore, but still).
He was moving to Canada from the US and wanted to save money on conversion fees
Unstated: also wanted to avoid Canadian taxes on said money.... and he paid the ultimate conversion fee instead.
It's not that I don't feel somewhat sorry for him, but I think he was way more foolish than unlucky. "unlucky" is almost always just another way to say "didn't really think through possibilities".
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P.S. - Ok, the subject of his post did say investment. But my point remains that you should not pull all of your eggs in any one basket, for any duration.
Re:He didn't say "investment" (Score:4, Interesting)
More succinctly, you shouldn't put all your eggs in a basket with no bottom.
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More to the point, never buy eggs because they're too fragile.
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I don't know. I probably have more money than I can afford to loose (if I don't plan to work til I die anyway) tied up in my real-estate (which I live in) and at the bank. Both are insured, the bank by the FDIC, the house by a mutual causality company of good reputation.
You could argue that I have to many of my eggs in to few baskets. I would counter argue that if my bank fails or something happens to the house AND their respective insurer simultaneously fails. Odds are pretty good world events are inte
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I probably have more money than I can afford to loose (if I don't plan to work til I die anyway) tied up in my real-estate (which I live in) and at the bank.
That is at least two things though, and one of which provides shelter which has intrinsic value of its own!!
A little more diversity would be better but you are already I nat least an OK position from a diversity standpoint.
On a side note regarding real estate, I agree with Mark Twain - buy land, they're not making it anymore.
Even if technically most pr
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It doesn't matter if the purpose was investment or short term transfer.
Its pretty common to put your life savings with one bank or brokerage firm.
That's basically what "Quadriga Imbroglio " was.... so he put all his cryptocurrency there?
Was Quadriga insured? Do people vet these exchanges at all?
The crypto would have been better off in a personal hardware wallet: providing he took proper precautions --- I'm sure someone who is a software developer could easily figure out how to manage that.
Key is diversity everywhere, always (Score:2)
Its pretty common to put your life savings with one bank or brokerage firm.
That is just a little more stupid than what this guy did to my mind. It's "insured" but what happens in the event of a truly huge failure or complete market crash? Insurance only works to a point.
I have multiple banks, brokerages. Those are all independent from what my wife has. Why would you NOT keep several sources to store income, rather than risk losing it all?? It's really easy to have multiple money stores, just make sure
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The FDIC has your back up to a point. If there are mass bank failures and the FDIC fails, having two bank accounts is useless. All that works then is a gun and a neighbor who has lots of food and gold and hates guns.
Re:He didn't say "investment" (Score:4, Interesting)
When you buy a share through a brokerage account, do you own the underlying share, or does your broker own the underlying share, upon said institution you lay claim to your just portion as some kind of common creditor?
I suspect that's a distinction with a difference.
Also, in a conventional bank, the cash portion is often highly insured by the Great Revenue Service of the Public Good (precisely the institution this clown was attempting to shirk by hopping aboard an underground railway through the Great Digital Wild West).
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"Its pretty common to put your life savings with one bank or brokerage firm."
And there's a good reason people trust banks. They are pretty heavily regulated and insured, and they don't go belly up with everyones money gone when someone in management turns into a crook or corpse.
"The crypto would have been better off in a personal hardware wallet: providing he took proper precautions"
Really it would not. The proper precautions are pretty involved. You need to contend with everyhting from a power supply failu
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To be fair, Travelers Checks are insured and can be canceled and re-issued if stolen.
Also conversion fees are not taxes.
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Any software engineer worthy of his title should have thought about that possibility.
Re:He didn't say "investment" (Score:5, Informative)
Canada taxes based on where you live. He was a Canadian citizen living in the U.S., so not subject to Canadian taxes on the money he earned while living in the U.S. I have several Canadian friends who work in the U.S. They have to be careful to monitor the time they spend visiting Canada on vacations and such. If they began (or ended) work in the U.S. partway through the year, and their visits to Canada push them over 183 days in Canada for the year, suddenly they are a Canadian resident for the year and owe Canadian taxes on everything they made. The U.S. taxes the money anyway since it was earned in the U.S.
I went through the reverse situation (U.S. citizen working in Canada). The U.S. taxes not just based on where you earned the money, but also on citizenship. So I was subject to double-taxation. Canada taxed my income because my job was in Canada. The U.S. taxed my income because I was a U.S. citizen. The two countries have a tax treaty so I only paid the greater of the two income taxes on my wages. But the treaty only covered earned income (you can apply your Canadian earned income tax bill as a credit to your U.S. earned income tax bill). If I had lived in Canada, any unearned income - interest from a savings account, investments, sales of stock which had appreciated, etc - would've been subject to double taxation. Both countries would've made me pay taxes on it. So I ended up living just across the border in the U.S. and commuted to work in Canada, and telecommuted often enough so I never passed 183 days per year in Canada.
California was another small nightmare. California taxes based on citizenship as well, and will still try to claim you are a California citizen (resident) even if you move to another country, and will try to make you pay California taxes on everything you make abroad. To thwart them, you first have to set up residency in another state before you move abroad. Preferably a state with no income taxes so they don't try to pull the same thing. So even if I had decided to live in Canada, I would've first had to have lived in Washington state long enough to get a driver's license there to officially shed my California residency.
The fees actually aren't your biggest concern. Exchange rates are always fluctuating. When I moved most of my Canadian funds back to the U.S., I did it a little at a time over a span of a couple months. If I had transferred it all at once, I could've lost a lot of money to a transient blip in the exchange rate. That happened to the owner of the company I was working at. He panicked when the U.S. Dollar began falling in Sept-Oct 2007 and converted all of the company's U.S. funds to Canadian in early November 2007. That happened to be
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The funny part is that ANY transfer of bitcoin is going to cost you 8%. That's the standard fee for any transaction.
Re:Diversify your investment portfolio (Score:5, Insightful)
That's right but not relevant here. He wasn't do that not as an investment but as a temporary solution to an international move.
It doesn't matter what you're doing. When I travel internationally, I never keep all of my cash in one location. Even though it's obviously not all of my assets, I try to make sure that no single adverse event leaves me up shit creek without a paddle. Same reasoning applies to important information, like your data, or the ability to access that data which is why this is a problem for more than just this one poor fool. It doesn't matter what the situation is, never have a single point of failure.
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Same reasoning applies to important information,
The same reasoning applies to any enterprise or engineering design that has robustness as a requirement: vigorously avoid single points of failure.
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Should have done it 100,000 at a time.
Re:Diversify your investment portfolio (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps they aren't actually ripping you off on those fees... Maybe, just maybe, you're paying for the reliability and trustworthiness of a real financial institution. You know, the kind with backups and professionals and legal oversight.
The real headline is "Chump tries to smuggle $500k across an international border, gets burned".
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Hey this is Slashot! We want to bask in schadenfreude. Because we were too conservative with out money to invest it, so are in joy validating out plan worked out.
Much like how Zoiberg rejoiced in his sandwich heavy portfolio.
Tax evasion? (Score:3, Insightful)
Because that sure sounds like a possibility. While he can't get the money back now, I hope the IRS and the Canadian equivalent are looking at this closely, since this is INTERNATIONAL commerce, not just interstate commerce, and deserves all the scrutiny it can get so people understand the consequences of flaunting the rules.
Losing the money is bad, but having it publicized you were dodging taxes while fleeing the country in the process....
So, trying to understand (Score:5, Insightful)
He used this cryptocurrency in an attempt to get around the laws and banking regulations of the US and Canada, and now we're supposed to feel sorry for him?
I mean, it's always sad when folks lose everything. But it's not like this guy was particularly innocent in what he was doing.
Re:So, trying to understand (Score:5, Insightful)
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The thing is that should essentially be a same-day transaction, if not a single transfer with a transparent step in the middle. The story doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me-- saving even 1% in total fees is only $4kUSD, but for a transaction like that I would expect to be closer to 0.3% fees. Sure, it is a nice chunk of cash, but it is like the stupidity of doing the transaction in gold coins taped to your body as you fly.
For anyone doing this in the future, the smartest approach is generally to move
Re:So, trying to understand (Score:5, Insightful)
You're perfectly right, if that is what he intended.\
His is a strange story. He says he wanted to just use the exchange to transfer his money - all $500,000 at once. That's a really strange choice: he is going through a third currency, meaning two transactions rather than one. The fees are going to be much higher than just an ordinary bank-to-bank transfer, plus that third currency is extremely volatile, meaning he has a lot of additional risk.
Then we have the "all your eggs in one basket" argument. With a traditional bank, that might not be a problem, but with an exchange? After Mt. Gox anyone in the IT world should understand that exchanges cannot be trusted. Multiple transactions, waiting for each one to go through before initiating the next. Or multiple exchanges. Or just leave his money in the US. Or his own offline wallet. Or, really, anything except what he actually did.
tl;dr: His story doesn't pass the sniff-test. I'm not sure what he was really doing, but it seems very likely that he was trying to bypass official notice of the assets - either their departure from the US, or their arrival in Canada. I wonder: did he make this money with crypto-speculation? And, perhaps, had never paid taxes on it?
OTOH: reality sometimes is stranger than fiction, and sometimes people really do just have brain farts...
Yes that risk is crazy (Score:3)
plus that third currency is extremely volatile
I had many of the same thoughts you did, but especially this one I don't see questioned my many other people - moving 500k into BTC or the like, even if only for a day is a huge risk in terms of volatility. What if that is the day BTC decided to take a 20% drop just for fun? In fact you can almost be sure that speculators noting such a large volume of purchase would figure out some way to screw the guy short term to make him panic and sell...
I still see BTC as
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What was illegal about it? He purchased crypto with USD, then was going to sell it in CAD. That's perfectly legal and is a method used in buying/selling foreign stocks.
If you export certain amounts of money out of the USA, the law requires you to report it to the US government. He was way past the limit with his over $400,000. The limit is, I think, $10000 USD. Canada may have laws that if you import certain amounts of money, this must be reported to their government, but as I'm not Canadian I can't speak to what their limits may be. He was trying to be clever and get around any reporting requirements so that his money just magically changed from US to Canadian dolla
Re:So, trying to understand (Score:4, Insightful)
But why didn't he just ACH his money directly from one bank account to another? Or write himself a check? As far as I know, those are both very low cost or no cost if they really want your business.
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You gotta admit, having most of a company's reserves tied up somewhere where it can only be retrieved with a password held only in the CEO's memory is quite unusual. And unless CEO is code for sole proprietor, very irresponsible on the part of the other officers.
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That's what they're trying to pull. Funny enough that if you do it legit and disclose to revenue canada(without the transfers OoC), they generally waive cryptomining unless it crosses the $1m threshold then they want a cut of it. You can even do this with XE's(currency trading), unlike in the US where they want a cut of every transaction.
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Actually, he was trying to avoid bank currency conversion fees, which run from 1% to 2.5% when converting US dollars to Canadian.
This is known as being penny-wise and pound-foolish.
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no, he's a dumb ass for moving half a million in one transaction.
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Part of that fee is to guarantee that your money, you know, doesn't end up in the grave of some tech-bro who had the bad fortune of dying.
On the bright side (Score:5, Funny)
At least he avoided losing his life savings because of a collapse of the global banking system.
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That's basically what happened. We have all kinds of protections against regulated bank collapses, but not against this.
Didn't do his research... (Score:2)
Before investing your life savings into something, it would be wise to do a lot of research into what you're doing. With all the disaster stories from Bitcoin (Mt. Grox) you'd think someone would at least look into history to realize that although there might be legitimate Exchanges, some are completely unregulated scams as well.
If you don't hold your own keys, (Score:2)
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He wasn't letting his crypto sit on QuadrigaCX, and likely didn't have it there as crypto for any more than a few minutes. He wanted QuadrigaCX's crypto$$$ exchanges to help him buy the crypto with USD (he either deposited USD into QuadrigaCX, or first purchased crypto using USD elsewhere which he then transferred to QuadrigaCX), and sell it for CAD.. and then the idea was that QuadrigaCX would transfer his CAD (as a 'withdrawal' from QuadrigaCX) to his CAD bank account. I didn't read this particular articl
Lesson learned, hopefully. (Score:2)
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Why not keep all that digital cash in one or several wallets that you control?
Perhaps he was in a situation similar to one I was in a while back. I purchased a small amount of bitcoin on a whim, and decided I would stick it in an offline wallet. That's when I discovered that the exchange would have charged a significant fee to transfer it out. From what I understand, these transactions fees are variable, and can get quite high depending on circumstances. You basically have to pay someone to perform the blockchain calculations for your transaction.
Cryptocurrency is like a history lesson (Score:5, Insightful)
I love how cryptocurrency is like a history lesson for Libertarians with regressive economic attitudes. They get to learn the hard way why each discrete financial regulation we have today was enacted.
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They'll just blame everyone but themselves for their own stupidity; then when it happens to them they'll complain that the government is obviously at fault because all its regulation pushed people into the unregulated mess.
Come on (Score:2, Informative)
They get to learn the hard way why each discrete financial regulation we have today was enacted.
It's not like countless people have not lost money from highly regulated banks as well.
I've lost way more money on bullshit fees and predatory practices than I've ever lost through cryptocurrency. At least there I can be in some control over maintaining my own wallet if I wish.
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Credit Union. No BS fees
I use a few credit unions myself but they are hardly immune from bullshit fees (just not as many). $25 every time I do a wire for a SEP contribution really irks me, for example.
Also my credit union just implemented some stupid rule you can only transfer $1k per day, meaning that for many practical personal transfers I literally have to withdraw cash, and drive it to another bank to get it transferred in a timely manner. Stupid.
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I love how you think libertarians are going to draw your strawman inference or feel your strawman way.
I expect what a true libertarian (as I *am* one) would say is: right now he's Emptor'ing his Caveat.
"Tong Zou wasn't a stereotypical crypto bro bent on accumulating flashy trophies such as Lamborghinis when he deposited his life savings into Quadriga CX's digital exchange. The 30-year-old software engineer, who'd been working in California for seven years, just wanted to save a few bucks on transfer fees af
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sounds like tax avoidance (Score:3)
If the guy was just trying to save bank fees, then the lesson is "banks exist and charge fees for a reason and now you know why".
If he was trying to avoid taxes, the lesson is "you want to operate outside the law you better be ready for the wild, wild west, baby!".
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I'm not sure "saving on fees" was the real motivation here. Tax avoidance sounds a lot more likely. ...
As I mentioned elsewhere, Nerdwallet lists the average international bank wire fees [nerdwallet.com] as $45 outgoing and $13 incoming, so he risked $422 US to save $58.
I hadn't considered tax issues, if there are any. A post on a CanadaVisa site forum says:
Transferring money between US and Canada is fairly simple. Several Canadian banks have the ability to open a US based account with the same or partner bank. Transfers between your accounts are then very simple. I would suggest that you speak to an accountant with experience in crossborder taxes.
It is not tax avoidance (Score:2)
So much for decentralized (Score:2)
When one person holds the key to your wealth it better be you personally.
How many users were aware that a single person controlled a key that if lost would wipe out their money?
LOLOLOL (Score:2)
Bwahaha this guy's an idiot! When you have 6-digit amounts of money, you don't put such a large fraction of it in any one bank, never mind in some sketchy-ass cryptocurrency exchange! His net worth must've been all over the fucking place since it was basically tied to cryptocurrency values! Did he look at his life savings losing and earning (but mostly losing) the value of a high-end sports car every day and think "Yes, this is fine"!?
Oh, and there's the fact moving such quantities of money through such una
Cryptocurrencies are no different than stocks (Score:2)
I tole you (Score:2)
I'm not one to say I told you so, but...
https://youtu.be/9AajslFuPro [youtu.be]
He was doing well till then (Score:2)
Even for a second (Score:2)
Not crying at least (Score:2)
At least from the tone of the article, it doesn't sound like he is playing the pity card or blaming anyone but himself, so I'll give him credit for that.
There are much safer while still being cheaper ways of exchanging money using securities, usually using dual listed ETFs like DLR(.TO). Maybe not as cheap as this scheme, but the only real risk is if the exchange rate goes to shit during the week or so this all takes, compared to the colossal risk associated with anything crypto related.
How naive are you people? (Score:2, Interesting)
It seems all(?) commenters here think, the owner is really died!
Look at how public interest in cryptocurrencies died (for a while now)!
Is it really hard to guess that the business was going bad for a while & the owner decided to runaway w/ all customer money, instead of declaring bankruptcy?
Why the owner decided to go to India? :-)
Supposedly, "to build an orphanage"!
Is it hard to guess he went there because it was cheap/easy to buy a fake dead certificate?
If he is really dead then where is the body?
Is a
Quadriga Imbroglio (Score:2)
He should have known a Quadriga Imbroglio was a bad place to stash his life savings - Alfa Romeos are notoriously unreliable.
It sounds like he was being penny wise and (Score:2)
pound foolish. Why would a smart person risk that much money on something as notoriously unreliable as bitcoin just to save a few $ in wire transfer fees?
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software engineers are perfectly capable of charting out the future of the species in spaaaaaaaaaace
They are; just not Canadians.
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Why invent a digital currency with little transaction costs which requires exchanges to operate is my question? Why not engineer the coins to be Uber-divisible or have a million more of them so your lowest denomination is of so little value, it can be used in goods-exchange, like the penny?
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Just like stock exchanges, except that your life's savings are on a thumb drive buried with some rando tech-bro.
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except that your life's savings are on a thumb drive buried with some rando tech-bro.
Even the dimmest tech-bro has backups. That there was what we refer to as a Tech-No.
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You can accumulate a "life savings" when you've barely lived? I dunno but saving up $500k in a matter of a few years of your career seems like you either got lucky or you're very successful and are going to be just fine.
420k in 7 years is only 60k a year. With a decent-paying tech job in California and humble living conditions he could easily have saved that up.
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How do you figure? He got a job at age 23 that allowed him to put aside 60K a year in the most expensive area in the US?
He must have been making 150000 to 200000 a year before taxes right after college and lived in a trailer. Humbly. ...and then he plowed everything into a risky crypto-currency?
No, sorry, it doesn't add up.
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And 6x the cost of living ...
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I'm no math expert, but it does sound like he was spending 3x the money he earned.
Re: Sterotype much? (Score:4, Insightful)
Hm, maybe fully deregulated commodities managed by a bunch of idiot tech bros was a bad idea?
Re: Sterotype much? (Score:5, Insightful)
De-regulated? Try never regulated. People invest in imaginary money at their own peril.
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Nah - a real crypto bro would have had his money in one of his frat bro's BTC exchanges whose funds were protected by his unbreakable password: password.
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Well, I do think there's a huge problem with widespread acceptance of stereotypes of male behavior. However that doesn't mean that examples of that behavior don't exist,or that they aren't more likely to be men than women. This just doesn't say anything about being a man per se. P(A|B) P(B|A).
Marketing studies of cryptocurrency show that speculation is dominated by men; some figures show men making up 97% of Bitcoin speculators. However that doesn't mean that all men who use Bitcoin are speculators,
Re:Sterotype much? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: Sterotype much? (Score:5, Funny)
Slashdot: News for nerds, stuff that matters. And 'tard fights. Lots and lots of 'tard fights.
Re:Sterotype much? (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, the linked article can't even manage to be factually accurate at the most basic level. For example, Men are a majority now? [statista.com] Nope.
There is no institutional bias against men? The author of the article has apparently never heard of schools, or universities, who literally advertise that they don't accept men for everything from scholarships to groups and centers paid for by male student fees.
Oh man, and is this ever causing a problem. Males are a marked minority among college students https://www.theatlantic.com/ed... [theatlantic.com] and getting worse.
Very little attention ois being paid to this at the college level, I suspect that it is considered a little less of a problem for the victims - but it is the beginnings of a real problem. The path chosen for modern women is to get a degree, then work until your mid 30's early 40's, then find a husband and immediately start fertility treatments in order to have a child.
But these ladies are having a problem finding a male that meets their expectation. To Google "where have all the good men gone brings up a plethora of results. Most often posed by women, discussed by women, and solutions proposed by women. And usually with a fine smattering of misandry.
When in fact, the qualifications for a "good man" means a college education, having their own place, making more than her, and then there are the physical qualifications. Tall, handsome, ripped. Then there are the life choice demands, which are to be ready to immediately start fertility treatments in a race against the clock.
Oh-ohhh, that college education demand. As we are nearing a 75 to 25 Percent female versus male degree status, right away we have a severe problem.
Coupled with the other demands, these women are going to have a real problem finding mates. A male that fits their demands is probably not looking for a woman of that age and is not looking to become a father at such a late age.
Probably the best article about the problem is https://www.dailymail.co.uk/fe... [dailymail.co.uk]
Even then, the article starts out: "Where have all the good men gone? These sassy, sophisticated, solvent women say they are struggling to find other halves that can measure up.
No shit.
Re:Sterotype much? (Score:4, Insightful)
How is the word "bro" sexist and how is it even remotely the same as calling anyone a slut? I'm pretty sure lots of men would be surprised that they were being sexist when they call their friends "bros."
You snowflakes are so adorable.
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Another thing is that QuadrigaCX by that point was known to sometimes take more than 2 months for a fiat currency withdrawal. So he went from USD to crypto to CAD in an attempt to save 2%.. but risks aside, he was looking at potentially leaving that $560,000 sitting with no means to invest it for 2 months. For someone knowledgeable to do such a thing, it would seem to me to really require a great distaste for allowing the banking system to take a cut (either that.. or if he chose to have the currency delive
Re:lol (Score:4, Interesting)
"Deposited his life savings into Quadriga CX's digital exchange" were the stupidity keywords that convinced me not to feel sorry for him.
After all of the Bitcoin exchanges that have failed over the past few years, why do people still DO this?
Re:lol (Score:4, Insightful)
"Deposited his life savings into Quadriga CX's digital exchange" were the stupidity keywords that convinced me not to feel sorry for him.
After all of the Bitcoin exchanges that have failed over the past few years, why do people still DO this?
TFS says he, "just wanted to save a few bucks on transfer fees" moving from CA to Vancouver, so he probably just intended to park the money for a very short time while he moved and found a new bank. Seems dumb in any case. Nerdwallet lists the average international bank wire fees [nerdwallet.com] at $45 outgoing and $13 incoming, so he risked $422K US to save $58. Cheaper still would have been to bring some cash, deposit a check to open a new account and use a CC for a bit. Some life lessons are hard, but "penny wise and pound foolish" doesn't have to be one of them.
Re:lol (Score:5, Insightful)
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Dunning-Kruger effect. They think they are smarter than all the other idiots who were scammed.
Re: lol (Score:2)
why do people still DO this?
Metal poisoning. It's all the aluminum in the air.
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How am I the snowflake, Sinji? I'm not the incel being triggered by someone being called a "bro."
Incels, snowflakes? Have I stumbled upon the comments section of Youtube?
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Tong Zou, that's who. Didn't you read the article?
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Gambling addiction is a serious problem. What makes it worse, is when it is classified as investing. Real good financial advisers advise to only invest as much as you can safely loose, many will just say you are not investing enough. And make you feel like you are a sub human, because by 40 you do not have a million dollars in your investments.
Cryto Currency is one of those get rich quick schemes, which is a bastardization on how capitalism should be working.
The way investment suppose to work.
We have a com
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Some companies sell and advertise their stock, that is their product.
Dead giveaway is big money golf tourney advertising. For products that nobody buys based on advertising. For example: 'Is that a Nortel network?' Nobody ever bought networking gear based on an add during the Masters. They were selling/advertising/pumping Nortel stock. Happens all the time.
When you see that, long, way out of the money puts. Buckets of them, they're cheap. Sure 'long odds gambling', but good bets, so do enough of it and
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Someone already said it above, but this too was my reaction (I mean, after "the hell was he thinking"). This would have been far worse had he been some poor sap 3 days from retirement with his cottage already picked out and his grand kids excited to spend more time with him.
In today's age if you're in the black at 30, you're pretty far ahead of most. If he was able to squirrel away 400k at this point in his life, we'll probably be fine.
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He'd have to convert it back to real money at some point, so he's not avoiding any costs involved in that. There'd always be a certain small loss going from USD -> Crypto -> CAD. What he was trying to do was save the $58 in wire transfer fees. For the sake of that, he risked $560,000 by giving it to a shady startup company.