I have a feeling you're going to see a lot of this in the next ten years with fintech cozying up to big Gov. And it's a weird dynamic to me. Stuff like this is why you have tight regulations.
Do I feel bad for the Fedex driver who lost her life savings? Yes, but like I keep most of my money in a relatively low risk low interest rate credit union. This exact decision making of "I'm going to go with this new-fangled tech startup with high interest rates" is exactly the kind of approach that gets you to risk your life savings. But it def. sucks that their approach seems to be praying on the vulnerable. It's one thing when someone on wallstreetbets loses their life savings. It's another thing when someone thinks their money is in a savings account.
But like, I'm at Yotta's website and the hero text is "Play games, win big". Not exactly a safe money vibe.
> Customers believed the accounts were backed by the full faith and credit of the U.S. government.
This is the biggest problem with the whole situation.
Consumers should be free to invest in whatever risk tolerance they choose, but it’s not okay if they’re under the impression that their investments/deposits are insured by the government.
Right, a lot of "neo-banks" that tried to attract young unbanked customers used them, 100 fintech clients with a total of about 10 million end users affected. Almost included players like Mercury too - Mercury held approximately $3 billion in deposits in Synapse, which they held for an ungodly number of startups and their own customer bases, prior to pulling out a little before the collapse.
> This exact decision making of "I'm going to go with this new-fangled tech startup with high interest rates" is exactly the kind of approach that gets you to risk your life savings.
This comes across as victim blaming, and I think it vastly overstates how "too good to be true" these interest rates are. Yotta's touted interest rate with their weird prizes is around 2.5% APY. Most of us were alive when this was a typical interest rate for a normal savings account, and given market growth it's not exactly unthinkable to get a 2-3% return. This isn't Bernie Madoff promising 20% annual returns.
I have a feeling you're going to see a lot of this in the next ten years with fintech cozying up to big Gov. And it's a weird dynamic to me. Stuff like this is why you have tight regulations.
Do I feel bad for the Fedex driver who lost her life savings? Yes, but like I keep most of my money in a relatively low risk low interest rate credit union. This exact decision making of "I'm going to go with this new-fangled tech startup with high interest rates" is exactly the kind of approach that gets you to risk your life savings. But it def. sucks that their approach seems to be praying on the vulnerable. It's one thing when someone on wallstreetbets loses their life savings. It's another thing when someone thinks their money is in a savings account.
But like, I'm at Yotta's website and the hero text is "Play games, win big". Not exactly a safe money vibe.
> Customers believed the accounts were backed by the full faith and credit of the U.S. government.
This is the biggest problem with the whole situation.
Consumers should be free to invest in whatever risk tolerance they choose, but it’s not okay if they’re under the impression that their investments/deposits are insured by the government.
Right, a lot of "neo-banks" that tried to attract young unbanked customers used them, 100 fintech clients with a total of about 10 million end users affected. Almost included players like Mercury too - Mercury held approximately $3 billion in deposits in Synapse, which they held for an ungodly number of startups and their own customer bases, prior to pulling out a little before the collapse.
> This exact decision making of "I'm going to go with this new-fangled tech startup with high interest rates" is exactly the kind of approach that gets you to risk your life savings.
This comes across as victim blaming, and I think it vastly overstates how "too good to be true" these interest rates are. Yotta's touted interest rate with their weird prizes is around 2.5% APY. Most of us were alive when this was a typical interest rate for a normal savings account, and given market growth it's not exactly unthinkable to get a 2-3% return. This isn't Bernie Madoff promising 20% annual returns.
No, I’m worried because I use Chime.