An old friend, politically left wing democrat, just told me he bought a substantial amount of BlackRock'e ETF. He does not have a very large retirement account (<500k USD), and he is very tentative and conservative in his investing strategy. He knows about my commitment to bitcoin. He refuses to listen about self custody, refuses to buy anything but the ETF, and really only wants to know when the price will skyrocket, so he can cash out. He's an otherwise smart guy. I haven't given up on him yet.

An acquaintance, really the friend of a friend who I have spent a good amount of time with, apparently just got scammed in some kind of phishing scheme. This guy was a programmer for Wang, the old stand alone word processing company, and other companies over the years. He is a lifelong Republican and Trumper. Since his retirement he has been doing his own investing of his large retirement stash. He has done well in tech stocks over the years. He apparently went down the "crypto path" a few years ago. He owned bitcoin, among other shitcoins. I tried to explain why bitcoin is different, and got nowhere. He is quietly arrogant. No one can tell him anything. From what I have pieced together he had recently come to his own decision that bitcoin was best. He didn't self custody, apparently keeping all his bitcoin on coinbase. He got phished, gave log in info out in an email (!), and lost 50k USD worth of bitcoin. I got all of this information second hand. He has announced that the whole crypto world is a scam, and he will never buy any again.