Molly White

remember when mainstream news outlets published a bunch of incredibly irresponsible articles about how rich people were getting off crypto, and then people bought in and got wrecked over the two years of "crypto winter" that followed?

anyway here's a WSJ headline i just saw: "Young Men Are Making Risky Bets on Crypto and Politics—and Raking It In Right Now"

https://www.wsj.com/finance/investing/young-men-investing-bitcoin-stocks-sports-betting-1d44cf8c?st=jxsVqM

#crypto #cryptocurrency

Dec 22, 2024 at 4:14amWeb
Show threadMolly WhiteDec 22, 2024

#crypto #cryptocurrency

Show threadSteve RigginsDec 22, 2024
@molly0xfff and the risk is a thousand times higher because it’s a scam
Show threadLeafletDec 22, 2024
@molly0xfff why invest when you could play the lottery, much higher return on investment.
Show threadIvan TowlsonDec 22, 2024
@molly0xfff 62% over 11 months is okay I guess but my roulette portfolio made 3600% in 2 minutes
Show threadDrew BreunigDec 22, 2024
@molly0xfff It’s doubly nuts because they used a 40% bond allocation baseline. A responsible viz would peg it against a broad market index, and you’d see the gains aren’t as pronounced.
Show threadConlan SpanglerDec 22, 2024
@molly0xfff Am I understanding this correctly? A hypothetical portfolio of only non-traditional investments that have gone up—and none that have crashed and burned—would have outperformed traditional investments? This seems… unremarkable.
Show threadGentleman TechnologistDec 22, 2024

@conlan @molly0xfff this, exactly. High risk investments have high returns because of the risk of no (or negative) returns.

If you cherry-pick only the winners retrospectively, then obviously you'll have high returns.

The trick is picking the winners *before* you know what the returns are.

Show threadDavid Fleetwood - RG AdminDec 22, 2024
@conlan @molly0xfff And all exactly the ones that went up and none of that money to the 1000x more that pumped and dumped because retroactive investing is the new hotness!
Show threadahistorical immaterialistDec 22, 2024
@molly0xfff risky investments occasionally make huge returns? Huge if true.
Show threadDrew McCormackDec 22, 2024
@molly0xfff If you just bought NVDIA in January, you’d be up 200%. Hindsight is a beautiful thing.
Show threadToon Van de Putte 🍉Dec 22, 2024
@drewmccormack @molly0xfff I'm going to start an investment advice blog where I just tell people about previous winning lottery numbers.
Show threadTor Iver WilhelmsenDec 22, 2024
@toon @drewmccormack @molly0xfff There are actually people who make money selling «systems» for lotteries, as if previous results have any influence on future results.
Show threadDarryl RammDec 22, 2024

@molly0xfff

Is jigglier line betterer?

Show threadToon Van de Putte 🍉Dec 22, 2024
@molly0xfff yes, and we all know that an investment horizon of barely a year is a sensible choice.
Show threadAndrei KucharavyDec 22, 2024
@molly0xfff reminds me of a certain famous quant blocking me back on Twitter after I pointed out that any investment strategy will almost certainly have a “better-than-SP-return” period.
Show threadGadgetGavDec 22, 2024
@molly0xfff Which stocks & bonds are in their comparison portfolio? If they’re going to pick and name the crypto portfolio, shouldn’t they tell us that?
And this is the WSJ..? What a joke.
“Highly volatile portfolio shows impressive gains in carefully selected small window. More on pages 3,4,5&7” 🙄
Show threadSeiðrDec 22, 2024
@molly0xfff And if my grandmother had wheels, she would be a zombie bicycle.
Show threadSteve RigginsDec 22, 2024
@molly0xfff so irresponsible it has to be collusion
Show threadGlyphDec 22, 2024
@molly0xfff I am trying to pay attention to individual authorship and not just develop a gestalt vibe of “the media” or even the editorial voice of a specific publication, and I was richly rewarded for it this time with a surprise “forbes 30 under 30” mention: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Roose
Kevin Roose - Wikipedia

Show threadMolly WhiteDec 22, 2024
@glyph if you're wondering what he's been up to lately
Show threadGlyphDec 22, 2024
@molly0xfff I do not like being a snide, judgmental, prejudiced jerk who thinks he knows everything about a particular kind of person just by knowing a *couple* of things about their past behavior, and if I had one request for guys like this, it would be “please stop proving me right all the time and reinforcing this unpleasant habit I have”
Show threadGlyphDec 22, 2024
@molly0xfff okay no that's not right. if I could only ask _one_ thing it would be that they stop enthusiastically facilitating our civilization's and economy's descent into a zero-sum Hobbesian nightmare of all against all. but if I had _two_ requests, this would be a close second
Show threadFediThing Dec 22, 2024

@glyph @molly0xfff

What IS it with that list? Didn't someone recently notice people on the list were disproportionately likely to do dodgy stuff or something?

Show threadGlyphDec 22, 2024
@FediThing @molly0xfff just a couple of comedy articles from The Onion style sites like (checks notes) the Boston University Review of Banking and Financial Law https://www.bu.edu/rbfl/2023/05/17/30-under-30-pipeline-to-prison/
“30 Under 30” Pipeline to Prison | Review of Banking & Financial Law

Show threadFediThing Dec 22, 2024

@glyph @molly0xfff

🤣

Show threadPublic Health is for EveryoneDec 22, 2024
@molly0xfff Consistently irresponsible smh
Show threadDefaulty 🇨🇦Dec 22, 2024

@molly0xfff

That reminds me of the Pyramid scam days of the 70's.
Except this is on a much larger scale.

Money + Greed = Misery

Show threadAvocado ToastDec 22, 2024
@molly0xfff can you buy crypto with collateral from other crypto? It kinda looks to me like you can, and boy if that isn't how Black Monday happened.
Show threadrefraction Dec 22, 2024

@molly0xfff "A portfolio of risky assets is far out-earning a not traditional portfolio."

the risky assets you hand-picked after the fact for having done well recently have done well? you don't say!

Show threadPhoenix GeeDec 22, 2024

@molly0xfff Whenever something/someone tries to convince you into buying something, especially with a "look, they got rich" narrative, it's because they are desperate to get out.

Otherwise they'd buy it themselves and shut up about it.

Show threadJack TongDec 22, 2024
@molly0xfff mainstream news is irresponsible by principle
Show threadNot SurprisedDec 22, 2024
@molly0xfff Young men get to learn lessons they can carry into their financial future. I am confident dad didn't suggest that investment.
Show threadJanisDec 22, 2024
@molly0xfff Imagine for a second what the world could be like if those "Young Men" were hunkered over a cheap home dialysis method, or a widely distributable CO2 collector, or PFOS cleanup.... instead of literally breaking the shreds of what's left of Capitalism, you know, that concept that's supposed to voluntarily motivate people to build useful things.