Gosh, I love this. One of the things that I really despise about the regulatory environment around VC is that the government wildly favors the rich. In order to invest in a company like Snapchat back in the day before it was public, you have to be an accredited investor. And the SEC has 8 different definitions of how one might qualify to be one. 7 of the 8 are related to being an institutionally accredited investor (you run a hedge fund with a certain amount of assets under management, for example). The one related to people is absurd. You have to make $250,000 a year the last few years, and a reasonable expectation of the same income in the current year AND you need at least a million dollars in net worth (not including illiquid assets like your house).

Doesn't matter what I think I might know about investing, about money, about risk, about statistics....I am NOT to be trusted like the rich trust fund kid. I'm not wealthy, therefore I'm too dumb to understand investments with higher volatility and risk of ruin.

I found a loophole (if you are an executive at the company in which you are investing, you can be accredited for that single investment). But still, I'm not allowed to put money into Snapchat. There have been relaxed rules around this and crowdfunding, but they still make it impossible to investment at meaningful levels.

And this is a reason why I am, and have been for years, an acolyte in the dark proselytizing about the benefits of crypto.

I'm tired of rich gatekeepers telling me what I am and can't do. I'm tired of the government using banking as a bludgeoning tool of foreign policy. There are 2 billion unbanked people in the world. Now they can benefit without needing all the expensive infrastructure of the western economic system.

Decentralization of money is just about the biggest idea going right now (second, imo to augmented reality as controlled by networks of AI). And the idea I quoted above is just one of the myriad reasons that it's so powerful with so much potential for growth.