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Nearly a Third of Millennials Say They'd Rather Own Bitcoin Than Stocks (bloomberg.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: A survey by venture capital firm Blockchain Capital found that about 30 percent of those in the 18-to-34 age range would rather own $1,000 worth of Bitcoin than $1,000 of government bonds or stocks. The study of more than 2,000 people found that 42 percent of millennials are at least somewhat familiar with bitcoin, compared with 15 percent among those ages 65 and up. Bitcoin rose more than 6 percent Wednesday to as much as $7,545, helping to push the value of the total cryptocurrency market above $200 billion for the first time, according to CoinMarketcap. The digital asset has soared more than 600 percent this year, compared with gains of 15 percent for the S&P 500 Index -- which might explain millennials' attraction.
And this is how the unknowing are separated from their wealth. Buy high, sell low, boys.
This. They see the stock market as being controlled by Wall Street; they can't get in on the game, so they turn towards another game that lets them do nothing while they imagine they're accruing value somehow. Nobody ever went broke offering people something for nothing.
I was originally going with "It's because they're stupid. That's why. That's why everybody does everything." - Homer Simpson
1/3 of millennials don't understand risk, volatility or liquidity.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
Bitcoin has essentially nothing in common with stocks. Stocks are ownership in a real world corporation that, ideally, pays regular dividends to share holders. The corporation has actual assets. Bitcoin is just numbers on a computer. It is effectively a currency, and while currency trading does occur, the currency markets are a great way to lose money. Bitcoin has no intrinsic value, but rather maintains its value by the utility it offers and the number of people who hold Bitcoin. This makes it very similar to any fiat currency, actually. At least investing in metals gives you something with intrinsic value.
But, whatever. Millennials can be as stupid as they want, it just means better returns for me. You do you, I've studied how rich people build and maintain their wealth, and I'm going to do that.
HFT is a scam, but it has little impact on people over the long term. If you're holding a stock for a number of years, the difference between what you make and what you would have made without the HFT is tiny.
HFT ought to be illegal because it uses future prices to steal a few cents here and there from a large number of people. But, individually, small investors aren't going to notice the difference as those couple cents are nothing compared with what you make over the long term.