Are members invested in Bitcoin/crypto?

dsio

Tether is the most terrifying one to me, how that “thing” came to not only exist but to grow to the size it is, with that amount of money involved on a “trust us, just don’t look behind the curtain” basis is mind blowing. If it collapses how does anyone begin to have faith in any successor to it ever again?

dsio

Just went down to $19k usd, not even sure what triggered that sudden drop

Walrus

My wife just admitted to me she has been shorting Bitcoin. I was gobsmacked as I set her up an account only so she would be familiar with it if I die before her which is probably a 99% chance. It seems all the great men die young and it just so happens I’m feeling peaking at the moment. I have no idea yet how she figured out how to short it.

Anyway off the Bitcoin subject I was getting the mail and my neighbor who was ecstatic when he told me he retired last year is now working 9a-2p at a package store not far from us. He had his granddaughters and daughter have to move in with him and he said his 401k and other retirement vehicles got so wiped out he is at a loss. I know some here probably take some joy in Bitcoin crashing but tbh even though I am a longer term Bitcoin holder my focus has been more on the stock market at large as that is where I am seeing the pain truly spread out. He is not the first guy to say similar words to me but he looked very down trodden and depressed. I didn’t waste any words trying to cheer him up as sometimes people just need to hear “ya it really sucks” what a shit show the US has become.

Archer

If someone who is retired has had their portfolio wiped out with recent stock market losses, then they had very poor financial planning advice. They should have the bulk of their holdings in secure investments at that stage...

Walrus

I’ll go tell him

Archer

You do that. We can blame the market or the US being a shit show, but there’s also personal responsibility involved as well.

Walrus

Oh you read a little deep into my comment I didn’t ask the guy to break down his entire portfolio but being my neighbor I know he made some excellent choices with real estate. So if you think my “US is a shit show” was based on that one particular measure that would be incorrect. Our financial house is a mess is all I meant by that.
On Occasional the governments lectures about personal responsibility as they jack up the debt another couple trillion. But my apologies if I offended you with my comment about the US. I just live here.

Archer

No offence taken - your country not mine.

But still, given those choices made by governments (all around the world) it's even more important that as you reach retirement age, you have your investments secure. Not doing that is just tempting fate, or irresponsible, depending on who you are I guess.

Walrus

Ya, people make the best decisions they can with the information they have and some people play it wrong however I get the feeling the main issue here is his granddaughters and daughter were forced to move back in with him due to an abusive relationship. He was one one the first people to buy in this neighborhood which used to be for normal people but somehow became very upscale so his 40k house (at purchase) is now worth around 700k. One of his goals was to downsize but since he needs to care for his family that part went down the shitter. He also has a pension coming in and sold a popular bakery he had so tbh I think his complaining about retirement accounts was just one small piece of a large amount of going ons but sometimes people just need to vent and I let them do so didn’t seem proper to lecture him about personal responsibility if he just needed to blow off steam I probably would have got something thrown at me.

Walrus

I’ll go tell him

Archer

Sounds like this was not a good plan then...