I'm living in a reality very different from yours, I don't think you can understand. In my country, actual journalism and speaking about certain things are crimes that will put you into the jail for the rest of your life, get you tortured and likely murdered. Access to the knowledge about certain things is blocked. To be able to do journalism or to circumvent the censorship, one essentially has to commit crimes in another (supposedly free) country as well, because there it's considered to be sanctions evading and/or illegal money laundering.

So yeah, of course you can frame it in your way and that would be valid. That was the original ideal of cryptocurrencies - to have a financial system not controlled by the governments. Of course it can be used for fraud and other things we probably both consider bad, by design. Just like gold.

Nigeria, Argentina, Venezuela, all prime examples because they faced especially severe problems with hyperinflation and traditional banking. You can also find widespread use in developing economies like Brazil, Indonesia, Philippines, but of course to a lesser degree since the problems with traditional finance are not as severe there. I will gladly provide more in-depth information, if someone provides some evidence to support that crypto users are the dumbest people on Earth. If not, feel free to use your own time instead of mine for your education.

You don't think a $1000 gamble on this new paradigm of blockchain crypto was a sound decision? When the sum I was putting in was otherwise an insignificant sum to me.

I bought in fully knowing it could go to 0, or maybe it could be worth a ton in 10+ years. To me it seemed like the chance it would blow up was well worth the tiny risk of losing a pretty meaningless amount of money to me.

I am not even otherwise a gambler. I have never gambled at a casino or on sports or anything like that. And my stock investing is all index funds. This was the only singular "crazy gamble" I had ever made and I knew full well it was crazy. But the potential in my mind around the tech and the potential hype around it seemed to greatly outweigh the tiny risk.

Unironic congratulations on being self-aware enough to take your profits without it affecting your reasoning. Anecdotally, not many seem to come out of crypto net positive with that mindset.

I don't see how you jump form this to that.

I made a singular choice once to put less than 1% of my yearly income into 1 thing that seemed to have some potential.

Back then it was the only crypto. I put in knowing full well it could go to 0, but the potential of where it could possibly go seemed well worth the tiny risk to an essentially insignificant sum of money to me.

There are other cryptos but they aren't the original or anywhere near the biggest, so they are not the same in my eyes. So those are actual legitimate reasons why I would not choose to perform that same risk again with a different crypto.

And the stock market isn't gambling? I view it as such.

Was this more or less risky than buying $1000 in scratch offs, or lottery tickets, or spending $1000 in Vegas?

In my opinion, crypto when I bought it had a lot more "potential" than any of those more "traditional" forms of gambling which is why I was willing to give it a try with a sum of less than 1% of my yearly income...

I am not saying it was a smart choice, just that I don't think it was a particularly stupid choice.

I don't see how that relates to me. I made a singular choice. I am going to put in $1000 one time and leave it alone because there seems to be some potential here.

I made the choice basically saying OK this $1000 I am putting in will either be worthless in 10+ years or it will be worth a lot.

I am not continuing to buy, I am not dumping loads of money into it. I spent less than 1% of my yearly salary one time knowing full well it could go to 0. The potential seemed well worth the tiny risk.