Personal responsiblity and the Ponzi scam.
https://archive.is/BbeY3#selection-557.0-669.62Prosperity is in general the result of the working of free markets. The one caveat to this observation is that market participants have to be responsible. It doesn't matter so much if they are intelligent or not, it doesn't really matter if they're good christians or devout muslims or anything else, but they do have to be responsible.
When some people behave irresponsibly the result is that they lose their money, which flows, albeit indirectly and circumvolutedly but nevertheless unerringly, to more responsible participants.
When a small majority* of participants behave irresponsibly however the net result is not just pain to their own fortunes, but pain spread across the board. All of a sudden you have to be very intelligent, and very experienced, and very well informed to manage to keep your money safe, and often enough even that's not going to suffice.
Giving over half a million bitcoins to a random idiot has the unpleasant effect of creating a high powered idiot. He can now wreak havoc on the exchange rate, which increases volatility and on the long term hurts everyone involved in bitcoins, because volatility is, much like inflation, an indirect tax on users.
Giving over half a million bitcoins to a random idiot has the unpleasant effect of creating half a million bitcoins' worth of valueless receipts, which are pretty much indistinguishable to the naked eye from valid receipts. Thus, if you pay on anyone's credit you are basing your judgment not on actual fact, but on an unknown and pretty much unknowable mixture of fact and hogwash.
Giving over half a million bitcoins to a random idiot is a bad idea. There are people whose personal responsibility in this matter is greater than that of most everyone else, people who have in effect acted as lieutenants for the random idiot. This thread is a convenient spot for all of them to avoid the indignity of being called out, and instead freely and willingly admit their mistake, and by admitting it learn from it. Specifically, learn that they aren't nearly as qualified as they thought to play the "banker", and by this make one step towards maybe one day actually being bankers.
The wanna-be bankers are not alone in their hour of humiliation. There are plenty of others who spend their entire day spouting nonsense on this forum, either under the guise of being "journalists" for some monthly magazine that does a couple issues a year or just as random internet experts in everything. Obviously they won't be learning anything on this opportunity as they haven't learned anything on any of the previous ones in their lives. That's after all fine, what would a mining town be without the drunks and general scum?
Aside from these practical considerations, there are some more general points to be taken home by anybody who wants to be a little smarter today than last month, and possibly have a little better shot at actually making money than before.
1. Learn the pecking order. All opinions are not equal. Some people are to be respected. Learn who. Some people are irrelevant and easily ignored. Learn who. More importantly than the who, learn why. Is it just because "everyone else seems to think so"? That's no good, forget it. Is it because they were right when everyone else was wrong? That's perfect, especially if it occurs with any sort of consistency.
2. Business means something very specific. Only the permanently poor imagine business = "anything to do with money". There's no business without a business plan. If something purports to be a business but "it can't" or it just won't share its business plan it is not a business. This means you can't be investing in it. Sure, you can throw money at anything you wish, as for instance the toilet bowl, Ponzi scams or scantily clad girls. However, in order to invest you absolutely need a business first.
3. Learn how to deal with your own mental limitations. If you think you don't have any you find yourself most likely in the situation described here:
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If one skims through the psychological literature, one will find some evidence that the incompetent are less able than their more skilled peers to gauge their own level of competence. For example, Fagot and O'Brien (1994) found that socially incompetent boys were largely unaware of their lack of social graces (see Bem & Lord, 1979 , for a similar result involving college students). Mediocre students are less accurate than other students at evaluating their course performance ( Moreland, Miller, & Laucka, 1981 ). Unskilled readers are less able to assess their text comprehension than are more skilled readers ( Maki, Jonas, & Kallod, 1994 ). Students doing poorly on tests less accurately predict which questions they will get right than do students doing well ( Shaughnessy, 1979 ; Sinkavich, 1995 ). Drivers involved in accidents or flunking a driving exam predict their performance on a reaction test less accurately than do more accomplished and experienced drivers ( Kunkel, 1971 ).
In short: if you're not aware that there's anything wrong with your judgment of "business", "finance", "investing", "money" and so forth that is almost certainly due to the fact that you are very weak on all of these topics, likely significantly below average. You should spend a good deal of time reading and a greater deal of time testing things out methodically before you promote yourself mentally to "average", or even "crummy". This means years. Years.
The advantage of BTC is that it's a very cheap and very clean way to learn about finance. The disadvantage (if we can call it that) is that it's much akin to falling in love: very, very, very hard on the knees. Vitriolic to the ego.
4. Step outside of your ideology. You might have been brought up in a very repressive social milieu in which some particular ideological slant was drilled into you. This is working to your disadvantage, get rid of it. Are you sticking up for your friends because they're your friends rather than because they have a point? Great for facebook, horrible for BTC. You will lose money. Are you following the crowd like a welfare state lemming? Great for the white collar slave, horrible for BTC. You will lose money. Do you think form is above content and as such it's okay to invade foreign countries and slaughter civilians just as long as nobody says shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker or tits on TV? Great for being an American, horrible for the free world. You will lose money.
5. Re-read this entire post. It probably didn't fully sink in on the first pass. Seriously. Alternatively it is always easier to just not like me. You will lose money.
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* This term of... art, let's say, will go down in BTC history.
