Quote from: beertoll on Today at 02:57:16 PM

TD Ameritrade and several other big platforms restricted trades on shares of GameStop to stop volatility and artificially inflated prices by a bunch of kids from Reddit who thought they are getting rich.

Not quite. Trading on Robinhood was restricted because they were no longer able to meet the collateral requirements of their clearinghouse. If Robinhood had simply halted trading altogether, the backlash would have been limited -- what Robinhood did, however, was restricting the buying of GameStop shares, not the selling. This kind of one-sided trading halt is rather unorthodox and to my knowledge unprecedented.

Interestingly most platforms that restricted trading in GameStop shares were neo-brokers like Robinhood. Apart from the occasional trading halt caused by circuit breakers most "proper" brokers did not face any restrictions whatsoever. It goes to show that neo-broker customers are more or less second class citizen in the trading world.

In short: If you want to trade stocks, get an account with a proper broker instead of an app that gamifies options trading. If you want to trade cryptocurrencies, go with a cryptocurrency exchange that actually knows what they are doing. And if you want to hold cryptocurrencies, get a hardware wallet or at least a non-custodial software wallet.

Quote from: beertoll on Today at 02:57:16 PM

But to each his own. Some people, for example, will not put a large chunk of money into an unregulated company in Seychelles that can pack up one day and leave with everyone's money. Some people prefer to have SIPC insurance.

I don't know when you last had to deal with cryptocurrency exchanges, but these days pretty much all cryptocurrency exchanges that are taken seriously are properly regulated and not hiding away in questionable off-shore companies. (Binance being the odd one out). Also be aware that SIPC and its international counterparts do not apply to cryptocurrency holdings.