'Crypto Ruined My Life': the Mental Health Crisis Hitting Bitcoin Investors (vice.com) 325
"Vice examines the toll on mental health experienced by people who invest a large portion of their net worth into volatile cryptocurrencies," writes long-time Slashdot reader leathered.
Vice argues that "The stress and anxiety that goes with funneling your life savings into a volatile market is no joke." Countless people have watched thousands of pounds disappear before their eyes.... Many crypto-investors are ordinary people taking a risk with their life savings rather than elite traders who can swallow sudden losses. A recent CNBC survey of 750 crypto investors found that a third actually knew very little about what they were investing in. The question is: What happens to these people when they lose big...? It seems like this fast-growing investor community is generating its own fast-growing mental health crisis....
Contrary to the frequent declarations that investing is an everyman route to wealth and happiness, interviewees told me that crypto had nearly ruined their lives.... Despite the intense stress shared by some crypto investors, finding a space to discuss these experiences isn't easy. Across Reddit and Twitter conversations around crypto, there's usually one reaction to downturns: "Don't be an anxiety bitch, HODL [Hold on for Dear Life]" — in other words, don't you dare pull out. Memes regularly circulate that joke about the intense stress and torment that come with investing.
The need to put on this brave face could be down to the fact that voicing your anxiety has a direct impact on the markets, which are essentially a reflection of confidence. Coins go higher the more people invest and drop the more people pull out. Crypto might be anxiety-inducing, but people don't make money from acknowledging this and actively lose out if they do.... HODL has become a joke in the crypto space, but that's exactly what so many investors are trying and failing to do with their psychological wellbeing.
Experts say crypto will eventually bounce back — as it often seems to do — but you have to wonder just how much damage will be done to the lives of its investors before it does.
Vice argues that "The stress and anxiety that goes with funneling your life savings into a volatile market is no joke." Countless people have watched thousands of pounds disappear before their eyes.... Many crypto-investors are ordinary people taking a risk with their life savings rather than elite traders who can swallow sudden losses. A recent CNBC survey of 750 crypto investors found that a third actually knew very little about what they were investing in. The question is: What happens to these people when they lose big...? It seems like this fast-growing investor community is generating its own fast-growing mental health crisis....
Contrary to the frequent declarations that investing is an everyman route to wealth and happiness, interviewees told me that crypto had nearly ruined their lives.... Despite the intense stress shared by some crypto investors, finding a space to discuss these experiences isn't easy. Across Reddit and Twitter conversations around crypto, there's usually one reaction to downturns: "Don't be an anxiety bitch, HODL [Hold on for Dear Life]" — in other words, don't you dare pull out. Memes regularly circulate that joke about the intense stress and torment that come with investing.
The need to put on this brave face could be down to the fact that voicing your anxiety has a direct impact on the markets, which are essentially a reflection of confidence. Coins go higher the more people invest and drop the more people pull out. Crypto might be anxiety-inducing, but people don't make money from acknowledging this and actively lose out if they do.... HODL has become a joke in the crypto space, but that's exactly what so many investors are trying and failing to do with their psychological wellbeing.
Experts say crypto will eventually bounce back — as it often seems to do — but you have to wonder just how much damage will be done to the lives of its investors before it does.
Joke? (Score:5, Insightful)
"The stress and anxiety that goes with funneling your life savings into a volatile market is no joke."
It is absolutely a joke, and the joke is on them.
Re:Joke? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Joke? (Score:4, Insightful)
That's the same argument people floated back during the subprime mortgage crisis, to try wave away responsibility from the banking industry.
Things are not so clear cut, unfortunately; it takes two to tango. People are essentially gambling their savings on crypto, yes, but there's an entire industry preying on the financially unsavvy, like promising 20-30% APY returns.
Re:Joke? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, there is an industry trying to convince people - but in the end, if you don't understand what you're investing in, it's like jumping from a cliff without knowing if there's water or rock underneath.
Many of my colleagues invest in crypto, but they don't bet any large sums. It's like penny poker to them, a social game they play and chat about when they have some spare time. They are not stupid - they know exactly that they're playing the "Greater Fool" game.
The mortgage crisis was a little different in that investors were relying on a regulated market, though they, too, were just too lazy to look closely at the product they were buying. Which was also true for institutional investors.
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Yes, there is an industry trying to convince people - but in the end, if you don't understand what you're investing in, it's like jumping from a cliff without knowing if there's water or rock underneath.
The problem is that you're equating people jumping into the bandwagon because they're stupid, with those who do it because they don't know any better.
If i didn't knew better and was struggling financially, those shiny Crypto.com ads in TV would be extremely appealing to me.
ignorance vs stupidity (Score:2, Insightful)
Are you saying there is an effective difference between ignorance and stupidity? Inability to learn verses unwillingness to learn maybe? The outcome is the same regardless.
Re: ignorance vs stupidity (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm saying there's a difference between being careless and being conned. There's plenty of both in the cryptoverse.
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Every article I have read in the last year on crypto has made mention of how it is largely a "Bigger fool" scheme, where value growth is not intrinsic and is instead based on a continuous influx of "bigger fools" willing to buy in after you and continue to inflate the price. Something that
Re: ignorance vs stupidity (Score:5, Interesting)
The cryptobro community at this point is basically a cult that works on hype, and the people drawn deep into it are in a bubble that pretty effectively produces propaganda to its members so that even if these criticisms are prsented, they're not believed.
I believe this is largely a result of 2 things. First being the 2008 collapse and people overall having a sense that the financial system itself is rigged: major players can run schemes that can destabilize the entire global economy and face next to no consequences (and often get bailed out). Rich people getting richer during the pandemic while the middle-class and the working class are struggling, etc. This feels inherently unfair and makes people distrustful of the entire global financial sector which primes them to look for alternative solutions that are 'fairer'.
The 2nd reason is that the crypto-space is operated and filled with people working in tech fields that run into the 'when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail' -problem. Put another way: these people think that the first problem can be solved with technology, and technology only. Not with better regulations or fairer laws or oversight, but tech. These 2 reasons combine and form the backbone of the cryptocult.
Not too long ago I had a discussion with one of the 'true believers' who claimed (among other ridiculous things) that Bitcoin will end authoritarianism, that it has 'intrinsic value' and that it will eventually replace most global currencies. None of these are obviosly true to anyone that understands anything about the economy or the crypto-market, but trying to get the devout followers to understand why they're not and they're being lied to is very hard, often impossible due to the sunken costs fallacy: they're already in the game. Many of them have invested significant sums of money into these schemes, and thus they not only want to, they need to believe that they're right. The alternative is admitting to themselves that they have been duped, and for many that is psychologically impossible to do. Other people fall for scams, not them, because they're smart. Scams and pyramid schemes to them are a thing of the 'fiat economy'. Tech is fair, tech is incorruptible. The blockhan will revolutionize everything and solve $insert_global_problem_here, because famous (tech) millionaire online [pinterest.com] said so. Why would they lie?
It doesn't matter that there are thousands of cryptocurrencies (with more popping up every day, since these days setting up one's own wondercoin can be done at the cost of a couople of hundred bucks [nytimes.com] even with basically no technical knowledge). It doesn't matter that hundreds of these which have already gone to zero, been used as pump and and dump schemes, rug pulls and so on. It doesn't matter that the amount of different crypt-scams is increased 1000 % [cbsnews.com] from 2019 to 2021. Their chosen coin cannot fail and will be The Next Big Thing(tm) and they will laugh on their way to the bank at all the naysayers and unbelievers.
These people are not investors. They're cultists.
Re: ignorance vs stupidity (Score:2)
"Bitcoin will end authoritarianism"
Right, because something like this could end thousands of years of mass brutality, and millions of years of primal instinct to conquer and take. This is akin to saying this magic crystal will trap all of the evils of the world inside of it.
When thinking becomes this delusional, it's safe to say that they have 'achieved' cult brainwashed status.
Re: Joke? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: Joke? (Score:4, Informative)
Or stock market if you are unlucky enough to invest before a crash.
Only the pattern is different. In lottery you have lots of little losses and one big payout every now and then, while stocks generally go up, but with a catastrophic crash every 50 years. Bad luck if your are investing during one of those crash phases.
Have you noticed that only people who made money at the stock market write those self help books about investing?
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Or stock market if you are unlucky enough to invest before a crash.
Stock market? Sir, options trading is a casino, not some back alley brokerage.
Re: Joke? (Score:2)
Most slot machines are purely a game of chance, at least the ones where you don't have some degree of control over the tumbler.
Like Bingo, it's very questionable if slot machines can even be considered a game.
Re:Joke? (Score:5, Insightful)
but the point is you should know better. If you struggling financially - "if it sounds to good to be true, it almost certainly is" should be a very familiar concept.
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Given the number of people i know who are not struggling financially and are falling for the same scam, i'd wager to say that's not true at all.
Re: Joke? (Score:2)
They should be treating it like an online Casino. With the Gambler's Anonymous number right by their side, they should only be putting a very small amount into that.
If the amount they put in gets a little larger, well that's what the phone number's for.
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If i didn't knew better and was struggling financially, those shiny Crypto.com ads in TV would be extremely appealing to me.
You have adverts on TV where you live?
Now we know for sure that it's a scam.
For my part (Score:2)
I don't think that the value of bitcoin, specifically, will recover and continue to rise after all the bitcoins have been mined. The total possible number of bitcoins is finite, and the mining brings a promise of profit that keeps a huge number of wealthy actors invested and investing. Once that dries up, they will pull out, and the value will crash again since it doesn't have them to prop it up. It will be a downward spiral from which the currency will never recover.
And we only have something like two y
Re: Joke? (Score:2)
Which noone is making them take up with a gun to their head
Re:Joke? (Score:5, Informative)
That's the same argument people floated back during the subprime mortgage crisis, to try wave away responsibility from the banking industry.
The backing industry was indeed responsible for the sub-prime crisis, but not for the reason you're suggesting. Sub-prime loans existed long before 2008 (and they still exist today). Where the banks should have been culpable was they packaging of these loans into investment vehicles, with snake oil like the Gaussian copula [ed.ac.uk] promising huge returns because risk could finally be quantified of these loan packages. Yes, sub-prime borrowers were preyed upon by unscrupulous banks. Yes, sub-prime borrowers should have been aware of the risks they were taking (80% of your household income for loan repayments wasn't a red flag?!). But they didn't cause the crisis, investment banks did by lying to investors that these packages of loans were a sound investment.
Re: Joke? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Joke? (Score:5, Insightful)
But they didn't cause the crisis, investment banks did by lying to investors that these packages of loans were a sound investment.
The best description I heard was "The banks took a bunch of piles of shit, took a spoon from each and put them in a bag, and convinced people the bags no longer contained shit."
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There was no pressure. At all.
There was a lot of "Oh we can make a lot of money!" instead of "How do we match homes to these mortgages".
The government didn't pressure banks to sell mortgages for too expensive homes. The banks did that all by themselves with stars in their eyes.
I know it's a very common political talking point in the US to blame the government for everything from this to "Education is getting more expensive because of government loans", but it's turning things upside down.
It's like you drink
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That's a common narrative, but false to fact. Instead of waiting 30 years for a mortgage to pay off, banks found they could could make more money TODAY packaging up those same exact mortgages into investment securities and selling them off wholesale.
Which only works as long as you have mortgages to sell. Which in turn lead to pressure on loan departments to generate more "inventory". And so they opened the floodgates.
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- Al Czervik
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I wouldn't call that "preying"...
The problem is that with current interest rates, risky investments are the only way to save for your retirement without having your savings eaten by inflation.
So it's neither the single fault of some companies scamming people into investing in risky investments, nor the single fault of financially unsavvy people.
And it is not only about investing in crypto. Anyone wants to build a nice juicy depot of Enron stock for retirement?
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There aren't a lot of innocent victims in the 2008 housing crisis, though. I know that when I bought my condo around that time, I kinda knew that housing in my area was hyper-inflated and wasn't really worth what I was paying for it. That said, I didn't really feel like a had a choice at the time, because housing prices were insanely high everywhere and I was tired of renting.
When the value of the condo went down by more than half 5 years later, I really didn't have anyone to blame other than myself. Sure,
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No, most people never take responsibility for their poor decisions. They only take responsibility when they are successful, but they will blame someone else when they fail.
With bitcoin, stocks, getting into a particular field or career... We will for the most part will do what everyone else in our peer group will do, combined with the fact that people will often promote themselves for being so smart and great when they are successful, then blaming someone else, or just hiding when they are not. We get put
People make poor decisions under stress (Score:2)
These aren't investors. These are people in their 40s, 50s and 60s who know age discrimination means they're going to lose their jobs but who thanks to our economy crashing every 10 years like clockwork (due to factors more or le
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Do you think your grandparents would have been prepared to evaluate the risks presented by an investment like cryptocurrencies? Back in the day, nobody was expected to make decisions on abstruse and risky investment vehicles unless they had specialized finance education. Now things are changed; people don't retire from companies after decades of service with a company pension, then live their remaining days out in relative comfort and security. They're expected to take control of their own financial des
Re: Joke? (Score:2)
Why is this even on here?
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"The stress and anxiety that goes with funneling your life savings into a volatile market is no joke."
It is absolutely a joke, and the joke is on them.
And as Ron White said, "You can't fix stupid..."
It's gambling addiction for millennial (Score:5, Insightful)
People are betting on what's basically unregulated securities, with all the classics - highly volatile prices, wash trading, rug pulling, you name it.
The fact that the SEC (and similar institutions worldwide) don't see fit to do anything about it is just mind-boggling to me.
Re:It's gambling addiction for millennial (Score:4, Insightful)
The fact that the SEC (and similar institutions worldwide) don't see fit to do anything about it is just mind-boggling to me
By regulating Bitcoin and other crypto they would be lending credibility to the items. Instead, they're letting the herd cull itself. As more and more people lose their life savings or other monetary amounts, word will spread how bad these things are, how unregulated they are, which will cause others to sell and drive down the price.
Sure, there will always be the next sucker to buy in, but overall the trend will be downward.
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By regulating Bitcoin and other crypto they would be lending credibility to the items.
That ship has long sailed. Half of the latest Super Bowl's ads were for crypto. Like it or not, it's gone mainstream to an enough degree to hurt a significant amount of people.
Honestly, the fact that the crypto market remains unregulated is downright irresponsible.
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Honestly, the fact that the crypto market remains unregulated is downright irresponsible.
I thought part of the appeal of crypto was precisely that it wasn't subject to government regulation or oversight.
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Nah. The appeal is the promise of striking it rich. Remember, Fortune Favors the Brave!
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Everything else is just hogwash. The ledger makes every transaction traceable. As we saw recently with that douche couple that stole a bunch of coins and then used an obfuscating exchange to try and launder their coins, anyone with access to the blockchain (which is anyone with an internet connection) can audit it and figure out which coins went to which wallets. It's just a matter of is the crimin
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By regulating Bitcoin and other crypto they would be lending credibility to the items.
That ship has long sailed. Half of the latest Super Bowl's ads were for crypto. Like it or not, it's gone mainstream to an enough degree to hurt a significant amount of people.
Honestly, the fact that the crypto market remains unregulated is downright irresponsible.
I can't remember the exact phrasing, but it has something to do when a product is being touted everywhere by movie stars, it's reached its peak and is on the way out.
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I can't remember the exact phrasing, but it has something to do when a product is being touted everywhere by movie stars, it's reached its peak and is on the way out.
Well, of course there's a lengthy German word that describes this exactly.
Dienstmädchenhausse [wikipedia.org]
It's basically a stock market boom that has jumped the shark.
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The FED's been sending out warning signals that all crypto's (except Bitcoin) should be regarded as securities and will be regulated as such. Apparently Bitcoin passes the Howey test according to FED chairman and Satoshi admirer Gensler.
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I said that wrong (it's a technical subject). Bitcoin did NOT pass the Howey test and is therefore not a security and will not be regulated as a security.
Could be regulated as something else, I guess. But this makes it clear that there's something special about Bitcoin. It's unlike the other thousands of crypto currency clones.
My guess (Score:2)
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There's no 'owner' of bitcoin, there was no 'premining' with bitcoin (like there was with Ethereum and all the others). Gensler explains it like this:
"Bitcoin, the most ubiquitous virtual currency, doesnâ(TM)t qualify as a security, according to Gensler. âoeBitcoin came into existence as mining began as an incentive in validating a distributed platform,â he said at the conference. Unlike other cryptocurrencies being offered by companies like Ripple, bitcoin had no initial token offering and n
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Big words.Satoshi mined the very first 'genesis' block, then the other cryptopunks took over. Bitcoins were worth nothing in those days.
Anyone, even you, could have mined thousands with their laptops. Compare that with Ethereum.
"How much of Ethereum was Premined?
You may not be aware of this, but back in July 2014, Ethereum (ETH) had a premine in which around ETH 60m (worth around USD 272bn now) tokens were sold for a total of USD 18.3m, while 12m was kept aside for early contributors and the Ethereum Founda
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It would be one thing if the large exchanges were US based, employing thousands of people and paying billions in taxes. Like I get when people say "shut down Facebook" and the government is like, uhhhh, they employ 500K people....
But they are all foreign companies, employing virtually no US citizens, while draining their bank accounts. Do you know anyone with a real, paying jo
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The fact that the SEC (and similar institutions worldwide) don't see fit to do anything about it is just mind-boggling to me.
The SEC is supposed to spend its time regulating the stock market, not gambl- oh, wait.
Oh yes, this is beautiful. (Score:5, Insightful)
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None of the three linked reports mention anyone calling onto their governments.
Re: Oh yes, this is beautiful. (Score:2)
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why isn't big government protecting me from my weird choices?
Oh hai Mr. Neverwrongchoice McRational!
I bet you think YOU lost nothing during the subprime mortgage crisis and that YOU'RE hodling ALL the strings of YOUR life firmly in YOUR hands. Yesserie!
No one else is making choices affecting YOUR life, nor are YOU susceptible to outside influences!
I bet you never even purchased a lottery ticket in your whole life, engaged a random number generator in any way, or been influences by someone else's "weird choices" - because that's what people with weird choices woul
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Speculating isn't a "weird choice" lots of people speculate. Lots of people buy lotto tickets, gamble etc, most of the lose and the vast majority of them are FINE with it because - they did it for entertainment. They might have been more entertained by winning but they bought a possibility and they understood that.
Lots of other people invested in things they thought would pay off but they did so as part of a diversified portfolio of other investments, the conservative ones even just holding some cash in
Re: Oh yes, this is beautiful. (Score:2)
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Hey man, give me your wallet. I mean, you have a choice, you can give me your wallet or my buddies here can rough you up and then take your wallet.
What, you want the gubmint to protect you from your weird choices?
Big government already protected you. (Score:2)
-They didn't even get the order right, it is supposed to be tax and spend not spend and tax.
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Also, "experts say crypto will bounce back"... (Score:5, Insightful)
Dear God.
We need to stop platforming snake oil salesmen.
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Because they tell you that they made their fortune by betting on heads and if they can do that - hey you can do that too! You just need to buy my book that will teach you how to bet on heads properly.
If enough people bet their money on coin tosses, there will be at least one guy who won all of them. Statistics. Like the "Professor Pigskin" scam of "The Simpsons" fame. That will work for gambling and investing. But if it happend at the stock exchange, no one will call it luck but "clever investment strategy"
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Good luck. There is so much money to be made by these snake oil salesmen, they will platform themselves if the major platforms kick them off.
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First we need to stop verbing nouns.
You do not have to sell (Score:3)
Well if prices fall you do not have to sell, wait it out.
With that said, I never bought any crypto and never will, to me it is a ponzi skeme or something similar to it.
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One of my former colleagues did buy crypto.
He used only "disposable" funds for that.
As he started early, he might have "won".
On the other hand, as he only invested "disposable" funds, basically even if the market crashed fully, he wouldn't really have lost.
Good! (Score:2)
Now go earn a living you fake!
Compassion fatigue (Score:5, Insightful)
I just can't muster the compassion for people who threw their money into these things and it blows up in their face. They supposedly knew the risks, yet cry poor (or, in this case, mental anguish) when it all goes south.
There was a story a while back how an Australian couple poured their file savings [dailymail.co.uk] into a crypto scam and lost every cent. They were seduced by the supposed quick returns, and naturally it's someone else fault they were scammed, and of course there is the mental anguish of knowing years of hard saving for a house deposit is gone. But they chose to dance with the devil.
So, no. People have been warning about crypto for years. If you choose to enter it, what "mental anguish" you bring upon yourself is pretty much your own doing. It's hardly victim-blaming when the "victim" knew full-well what they were getting into.
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I know someone who blames crypto for his wife leaving him after he mortgaged the house to find a crypto investment. Dumb fucks will blame anyone other than themselves for their own dumbfuckery.
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*fund a crypto investment.
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I know someone who blames crypto for his wife leaving him after he mortgaged the house to fund a crypto investment.
Yeah; it wasn't putting a mortgage on the house (which is half hers) without telling her; it wasn't taking those funds and putting it into an investment vehicle without her knowledge or consent; it wasn't in insane amounts of lack-of-communication and sheer hiding stuff within the marriage that caused her to leave. It was crypto. The insight isn't strong with that one.
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On a smaller scale, we had to teach this to our kids. We taught them how to track their money and do simple budgeting. One of them hated the process, so we eventually decided to let him learn the hard way. We no longer required him to stick to his budget. Within 3 months, he spent everything he had and found himself owing hundreds in overdraft fees.
Some lessons can only be learned the hard way. Some people's parents never let their kids learn by failing, and some of them end up buying crypto.
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I'm buying a house (close in less than 2 weeks) and 30% of my down-payment came from profits in the stock market. Over time I would pull cash out of the market to make an offer, have the deal fall through, and then have to decide "Do I put the money back in the market, or do I just sit on it?" Each
Re: Compassion fatigue (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't really think they're looking for compassion from us. They're probably just looking to share their story and connect with others like them. Most of their stress probably comes from their recognition that it was their own decisions that ruined their life. When someone else's actions take away your life, most people retrench. When it's your own actions, it forces you to question every decision you make. This leads to high levels of anxiety.
This is a classical pump and dump scheme (Score:2, Insightful)
Bitcoin a handful of people are holding a ton of coins, they are basically worthless unless exchanged to real value, so what happens is pump and dump, try top get articles to inflate the price tons of greedy "investors" aka flock with money jump on the bandwagon, once the price is high enough offload cryptos to the dumb masses... the exchange rate crashes big time or in smaller crashes depending on how much money is dumped for real one... rinse and repeat...
This is a dump and pump scheme by the book. Given
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We're definitely learning more about the nature (or the psychology) of money. It would be too easy to stick to 'pump and dump' cliche's.
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I don't see any consensus based world wide decentralized currencies there. Nor do I see any hard market caps. It's not quite the same, is it?
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Google "Tether".
You think crypto is bad... wait till you see the U (Score:2, Interesting)
As an early adopter of cryptocurrencies, I have done extremely well on it, however even to this day I dont look at it as an investment per se. To me it is and always has been a democratized form of money. It is also a moral decision on my part as I feel centralized banking and fiat currency is repugnant. I have a modest portion of my net worth in crypto as well as many other assets and securities of varying liquidity, mostly as a hedge against the rapidly falling dollar.
With that being said these short term
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As an early adopter of cryptocurrencies, I have done extremely well on it, however even to this day I dont look at it as an investment per se. To me it is and always has been a democratized form of money.
This was the original stated aim of cryptocurrency-- it's why the word has "currency" in its name-- but it never became currency.
Money needs a stable value. When people are buying and selling in order to speculate, that's not money, that's speculation. If people buy and hold, that's not currency, that's taking "currency" out of circulation.
You might try arguing "no, but it is used as currency in the dark markets"-- but actually, no, it's not. It's used as a method of disguising funds transfer, not actual
Re:You think crypto is bad... wait till you see th (Score:5, Insightful)
That aim completely died years ago. If that's what you're in for, then practically nobody shares your vision.
99.9% of people are chasing the gains from buying low and selling high an otherwise useless asset. The idea of using cryptocurrency as an actual currency is a very minority position, and not even workable with the most well known ones if you wanted to. Monero has that as its aim, but I don't think it works well even there due to the drastic changes in valuation it's had.
Re:You think crypto is bad... wait till you see th (Score:5, Insightful)
Crypto is a solution in search of a problem. The part of the trust chain necessary for on-line banking that crypto solves has always been the least exploited part of the chain. Unrealistic scenes from TV and Movies aside, very little banking fraud has to do with people hacking in and stealing money out of accounts, or someone playing man-in-the-middle impersonating the bank to steal your funds in transit. Instead, the vast majority of financial fraud is the exact same kind that is causing so much trouble for crypto-investors. Social engineering schemes. Tricking people into putting their money someplace it can be stolen, or tricking them into divulging the information necessary to steal it out of the account using the official mechanisms.
The fact that a single bit-coin transaction produces a literal ton of CO2 in order to achieve this "trustless" validation via the block chain is just one reason why it will never be a revolution even if it were solving a real and necessary problem. The transaction limit is another.
Profit off of it if you can I guess, but don't delude yourself into believing it is anything other than a scam designed to fleece those who buy in late or are not technically literate enough to protect themselves.
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It's been 13 years and it's still "a scam designed to fleece those who buy in late".
Isn't it about time to consider the possibility that you might wrong? How stubborn can you be, really?
Should have used Crytal Meth instead (Score:2)
Even less money left and also no teeth.
It's gambling (Score:2)
Stupid people not taking responsibility (Score:3)
Crypto didn't ruin your life. You ruined your life playing with Crypto.
This is the same as anything. If you fall asleep at the wheel, have an accident and lose your legs, it wasn't the car which ruined your life. It was you. YOU. OWN YOUR MISTAKES.
Tolerate this, and... (Score:3)
... your savings will be next.
This is what happens when we tolerate "planet-incinerating Ponzi schemes" (jwz). Our governments, our regulators, our media, and everyone down to the fanboys on Slashdot who tolerate and even encourage crypto-currency schemes are the reason why this is happening.
Stop tolerating "crypto-currency" schemes, with their outright frauds, their manipulated values, their wash trading, and their dubious promises of returns.
Re: (Score:2)
really? (Score:2)
We're concerned about the mental well being of people who sink their life savings into bitcoin.
Really?
I DOUBT their sanity, but no, I don't have to give a shit about them.
Invest? (Score:3)
Smarter than banks! (Score:2)
So you thought you could outsmart investment banks and do your own thing?
You thought Gordon Gekko was just a fictional character?
You thought those silly SEC / FCA etc. questionnaires were useless?
Cry Me A River (Score:2)
Fools with more money than sense are quickly being parted from their money. News at 11.
You know that gut feeling? (Score:2)
Mental health starts with self control and proper risk management. And I am not talking about just money.
Day traders (Score:2)
Welcome to the world of day traders.
Please try not to shoot up the place.
Cryptocurrency is not an investment (Score:2)
It's a risky gamble, in a dicey casino, with unknown skulduggery going on in the back room
Crypto didn't ruin your life, you did. (Score:2)
Wake up and take responsibility! I can't stand this victimhood mentality these days where nobody is responsible for their own decisions because they took bad advice.
Gambling (Score:3)
It must be stressfull blowing your entire savings on the Roulette wheel, or on the horses. It is no different with cryptocurrencies. If people were betting on horses the way they are betting on crypto, they'd be diagnosed with gambling addiction. The reality is that the majority of investors must lose, and will lose sooner or later.