[somic]

I hope you are right and I hope it works out but I am skeptical.

I will give you a simple example. If you get a random sample of people in the US, I am afraid more than 90% of them won't even understand that investing 5K in a neighbor's kid's shiny new startup is not a binary proposition (invest or don't invest); one actually is buying N of something (shares, options, warrants, etc) for those 5K, with all sorts of properties like seniority, etc, etc, etc.

Regular people can understand a loan - I give a neighbor's kid 5K and get back 5K+3% in 1 year. But equity-based investment is significantly harder to grasp.

[vonklaus]

Damn, I thought I was cynical. You think that 90% of the US population couldn't be made to understand equity investment?