Item — HN Reader

This is cherry-picked, emotional, and an anecdote.

How about some happy stories of all the 20-year-olds who became millionaires from unregulated bitcoin trading to show the other side of the coin?

I guess I have a rather libertarian view on this, that it's worse to outlaw the knife than for a fraction of knife users to accidentally cut themselves. That said, I'm entirely in support of more educational resources on the topic, but don't hold anybody accountable for that.

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Do you really think that organizations which are equipped to provide educational resources on the topic (e.g. Robinhood) are going to do so out of the goodness of their hearts? No, someone must be held accountable for it to happen, and I wouldn't hold my breath delegating this responsibility to the public sector.

Unregulated bitcoin trading is completely different from this situation. We're not talking about hucksters and gambling. Tons of kids look up to legitimate, wealthy people who say "investing is the best thing for your future" and the only way the young folk know how to do this is to get on Robinhood because of its marketing/branding/ease-of-use. How many more kids are going to try to take well-meaning advice recklessly due to lack of experience / unfinished brain development, and find themselves in a void of inescapable depression leading to suicide because nobody is being held accountable?

> Tons of kids look up to legitimate, wealthy people who say "investing is the best thing for your future"

This is fair, but if you continue to listen to those same people, you'll hear them say "put your money in VTSAX and forget about it for 30 years", not "go trade options".