[sirsinsalot]

Finally a take I agree with. The victims here are IMHO victims of their own greed. They wanted all the reward of putting money into unprotected and unregulated schemes and now many cry that the risks didn't go their way.

It doesn't make SBF less of a criminal but it does make the victims less victimised.

[rootusrootus]

> They wanted all the reward of putting money into unprotected and unregulated schemes and now many cry that the risks didn't go their way.

Is that not just victim blaming? This was not an investment gone bad, this was stolen funds. It would be one thing if they lost all their money because BTC value dropped to zero. But SBF stole the money.

[kelnos]

I really dislike the term "victim blaming", as too often it's used to shut down rational discussion about the facts of what happened. Not saying that's what you're trying to do here, but...

Often a victim of a crime could have taken different actions that would have prevented their victimization. That doesn't necessarily make it their fault, or even assign some portion of the blame to them. It's just a fact of circumstance.

A decade or so ago I was mugged by three men while walking home from a bar on a deserted, poorly-lit stretch of street at 2am on a Tuesday morning. It wasn't my fault that it happened, but I could have made other -- better -- choices leading up to that which would have prevented it from happening to me. We can argue whether or not it would have been reasonable to expect me to make those better decisions given my circumstances before getting mugged, but those are still the facts on the ground. I did not need to be walking home; I could have called a car or taken a bus instead. I did not need to be there, at that time, with my judgment, reaction time, and situational awareness impaired. This is about outcomes, not blame.

If I were looking to make some money and had a choice between buying conventional stocks or buying crypto, I'd hopefully consider the risks beforehand. By now I think it's fair to assume that most people who might buy crypto should have heard about a variety of scams, fraud, and outright theft that have occurred in the crypto space. All other things being equal (they're not, but let's say they are), a decision to buy stocks vs. crypto should take into account the expectation that there's a higher risk of losing the money to a scam when buying crypto. Again, that doesn't make it the crypto-buyer's fault when the person/company holding the crypto wallet for them steals it. But it's true that the crypto-buyer could have made different -- better -- decisions up front to avoid the possibility of that outcome.

[sirsinsalot]

I'm not blaming the victims, I'm blaming everyone involved, at any level. You consider them victims, I consider them to have discovered the "find out" half after "fuck about".

If I run about in the road and someone runs me down, I may be the victim of driver, but also my own stupidity.

Suffering the consequences of one's own decisions doesn't automatically infer victim hood by someone else entirely.

They ran about in the road.