Post #4379463

2026-08-04 15:55 UTC

One final thing about this story: "Wealth is not the same as money," he said. "You see a lot of people getting wealthy but you can't spend the wealth. You have to sell the wealth to get money because you can only spend money." There is a ton of wisdom in this statement. The excellent (and IMHO required reading) book The Psychology of Money drives home one idea over and over: True wealth is what you don't see.

Replies (4)

@paul_ipv6@infosec.exchange 2026-08-04 16:01

@briankrebs@infosec.exchange the first time i worked for a company where i got stock, my boss at the time noticed us all watching the stock price go up and down. he told us "stock isn't real. it's only real when you sell it and turn it into cash." i try to remember that with my 401ks and not drive myself crazy checking them all the time.

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@david_chisnall@infosec.exchange 2026-08-04 16:29

@briankrebs@infosec.exchange The amazing thing is: none of this is even slightly hidden. Everyone investing in it knows it's a bubble. None of his warnings are even slightly surprising to anyone who has been paying attention for the last two or three years. But that doesn't matter because you can make money in a bubble as long as you get out soon enough. I posted about this in another thread, but a lot of 'investors' are 'gambling with the house's money': They jumped in early. When things in the bubble doubled in value, or maybe a bit more, they cashed out their initial investment. After this point, there is no way that they can lose money. Maybe they invested $10 M in NVIDIA in early 2016 and sold $10 M of NVIDIA in late 2016, still holding $10 M. By 2024, it was an obvious bubble. If they sold half of their stock then, they'd be $350 M up. No matter what happens with the bubble, they've made $350 M in eight years with $10 M in seed capital. That's over a 45% average annual RoI. If the bubble continues to grow and they cash out at the right time, they may make another half billion or more, but if the bubble pops so badly that NVIDIA goes bankrupt, they still made $350 M. This is the opposite of the 'betting on the margin' that smaller investors do before catastrophic crashes (the Wall Street Crash in the 1920s and Korea last week), where you borrow against your existing investment and invest more based on that, but often both are happening at the same time and these are the people funding the big payouts to the former category.

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@coatilex@mastodon.social 2026-08-04 16:00

@briankrebs@infosec.exchange You don't really have to sell anything as long as a lender accepts your wealth as collateral. You can have tons of money that way without ever touching your assets. But if said assets suddenly devalue, this wonderful money machine not only brakes for you but it also breaks for all the other people who rely on it for their pesky little mortgages etc

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@masek@infosec.exchange 2026-08-05 05:22

@briankrebs@infosec.exchange True wealth is having time for friends and family while having enough to eat and not being dead tired. True wealth is being able to see a doctor when you don’t feel well without fear of costs. True wealth is not having to cling to a toxic job. True wealth is looking forward to retirement without financial dread.

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