Comment on Opinion | Don’t Get Fooled Again by Crypto

• locuester@lemmy.zip ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I spent 25 years in tradfi as mentioned previously. I’m not delusional or a grifter/scammer.

  You realize that some of the things listed on crypto markets actually represent more than just an entry in a distributed ledger, right? I live in Solana (a distributed ledger) world and there’s dozens of tokens which represent true products. Sure most are financial related themselves - but that’s no different than tradfi where banks and exchanges are themselves listed on the exchanges. Others are depin models and governance things for example. It’s a real industry which gets a bad rap since it does enable bad people to do bad things too, and that gets most the press.

  First off, our securities regulation is ancient and much is based on a pre internet global world. There’s many changes that can be made to give consumers access to private equity and capital efficiency which currently the rich have guarded for themselves.

  Secondly, there are far bigger and badder scams under the current regulation. Enron, worldcom, madoff, tyco, healthsouth, centennial, bre-x etc.

  Bad people do bad things under either model, but the free, permissionless model sure opens the door to allow little guys to have a chance.

  Raising capital for a small venture in a free global market is a tough nut to crack. And yeah thar be dragons there. But it’s such a freeing concept once you see it in action. I believe in freedom of money, and the global revolution it can bring.

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  • sonori@beehaw.org ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Um, no. Traditional markets have financial related companies, but you’ll have to show me where you’re getting the idea the finance sector makes up the majority of the traditional market and as such it is no different than the crypto space where finance makes up nearly the entire market.

    I also don’t think that the existence of the internet really changed much when it comes to the need for rules for soliciting investment from the public such as providing investors accounting figures and legal accountability. Nor has it changed the fact that cryptocurrencies haven’t changed the process for gaining the investment necessary to start a new bakery or other small business and never will provide a pathway to do so, and as such hasn’t really changed much at all when it comes to providing customers with more access to investment loans outside of more crypto businesses.

    A lot of the scandals you listed weren’t done under the current market regulation, but rather directly led to the current market regulation at the behest of the little guys who got screwed over and pressured politicians into passing it, and as such I just don’t see how removing the protections for the little guy is ment to benefit them over the rich.

    I mean surely then the rich would be opposed to the crypto and loosening regulations rather than being the ones most heavily pushing and lobbying the government for them?

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    • locuester@lemmy.zip ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      I never said a majority of stocks are financial. I’m crypto they are tho but that’s kinda obvious given that we are bootstrapping a new financial system.

      The internet changed a ton of things!!! Individual investors have so many tools to research now compared to 30 years ago! It’s much easier to get due diligence on investments and confer with others.

      Accounting figures are obviously FAR superior with crypto native companies since everything is verifiable.

      cryptocurrencies haven’t changed the process for gaining the investment necessary to start a new bakery or other small business and never will provide a pathway to do so

      I adamantly disagree with that last part. This is precisely where crypto shines when done right it allows everyone an equal footing on raising and investing in capital projects. Note I’m not saying that it removes risk - it removes friction - admittedly at the cost of risk.

      The reason you don’t see this taking off is 100% because of regulations, hoops, lawyers, and capital required to register a security. If I want to tokenize a business plan in the USA, I cannot easily do that without getting wrecked by the SEC.

      The elitists can and will continue to do private equity and insider trading to maintain a lead because they have the capital to do so. I can’t speak to how they all feel about crypto. I would assume they would love it too. Free markets are far cheaper than the crap they go through now to do fund raising and such.

      It’ll be interesting to see how this goes in the coming 30 years. It definitely benefits countries without a strong financial system already in place way more. Will it outperform the legacy, cumbersome financial system? Time will tell!

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      • sonori@beehaw.org ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        I don’t think it’s obvious that a tool for loaning money to businesses would be primarily used for loaning money to businesses trying to solve problems with the tool itself.

        I don’t think the internet has really changed all that much when it comes to due diligence. Maybe it’s a little easier to do background checks or find a person’s previous projects, but you still need an trusted third party to audit a company, you still need to be sure who is legally liable for if things go wrong, etc…

        Neglecting that a lot of companies don’t actually want every person’s pay, every dime they spend for a luncheon, and every thing R&D buys to be publicly available to their competitors, it’s still not actually much help for verifying and auditing their financials because nearly all fraud already relies on people entering false information to the computer about what the transaction was for or why it was made, not anything that could be verified by the chain.

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