
I am an HFT Programmer - marksu
http://developers.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2357190&cid=36936764
======
zedshaw
This is a huge load of bullshit. 99% of the "banking programmers" are some of
the worst coders in the world. A vast majority of them just babysit a
Bloomberg terminal, barely understanding the supposed math they use all day.
Others just babysit an Excel spreadsheet, or worse, develop whole applications
in Excel then try to get a real programmer to "build it". The lower echelons
are even worse and just make shitty C# and Java web apps that are huge wastes
of money.

The supposed "C++ optimizer" guys are some of the worst. They're the guys who
go off and make algorithms they think are blazing fast, and sure for one tiny
little use maybe, but then when you actually see the code it's a huge
convolute mess for nothing. It's usually riddled with bugs, not in source
control (Clearcase), only if it is only because the Compliance Dept. told them
to, and they refuse to share because they're too damn competitive.

I've even seen projects by some of the top guys that were built _by hand_. No
make file because the dude didn't trust make.

Don't even get me started about these jackasses that think their huge
monolithic shitpiles of Java code are somehow superior, yet the only reason
their code can actually run is because some bank sunk millions (and maybe
billions) into infrastructure just to run that crap even moderately fast. I
had one project where the damn process used so much ram per request they had
to go buy an Azul box just to make it run even at 2 req/sec. That was their
"cream of the crop" coders.

Finally, they constantly do this thing where they say, "Oh man my code is so
awesome it's written in C++ and is so fast. No you can't see it. Oh but I make
$500k a year!" They equate how awesome their code is by how much they make,
but rarely have any idea of what other people's code is like.

Honey, if all you can make from your corrupt financial masters is $500k while
they make billions and trillions then you're not a very good coder. And if I
can't see your damn code, then you're a damn liar.

Take it from a guy who thought he'd run into some quality in the finance
world. There is none, they just have so much money they can't help but make
tons of it.

~~~
veyron
Fast C++ is an oxymoron. Real men use C and assembly. And yes, I bootstrapped
my own HFT

~~~
patrickk
" _And yes, I bootstrapped my own HFT_ "

I would be interested in hearing your story. Would you like to share some
details?

~~~
veyron
Realized this would be a much larger effort than a single HN reply or a single
blog post would justify, so I am starting a blog series on this. First post:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2829116>

~~~
patrickk
Thanks! The first post left me hungry for more :D

------
jasonkester
Quick quiz:

Given the ability to charge $100/hr for your time (which is what this guy's
rate works out to), would you prefer to make:

    
    
      a.) $500,000 by working 100hr weeks
    
      b.) $250k by working 50hr weeks
    
    

Me? I tend to lean toward secret option c: make $100k by working 25 40hr
weeks, then spend the rest of the year squandering it on a beach with tall
cold beers, good surfing/climbing and good wifi.

Gotta keep them priorities straight.

~~~
DasIch
Indeed. What is the point of making so much money if you don't have time to
spend it or have anything that resembles a life for that matter.

~~~
veyron
Because you can make enough money to retire before you are 30, which means you
can spend much more time with your wife and kids when that time comes. I
wouldnt want to be the type of dad who has to stress out about money issues.

~~~
veyron
Replying to bmj (not sure why i don't see a reply link ...)

For me, and I think for a lot of other people on HN, retirement means not
having to work for the money. Which, for people in some areas of the world,
isn't really that much. And in that vein, if you don't have to worry about the
money, you can afford to say "no, I would rather go see my daughter's choral
concert than work". Obviously I would keep myself busy, but it would be under
an arrangement where I could prioritize my family.

~~~
dkersten
_not sure why i don't see a reply link_

HN has a reply cool off period. The more nested a comment, the longer the cool
off period.

~~~
hugh3
Is that the reason?

I always get around it by clicking "link" -- that always brings up a reply
box.

------
hugh3
How to get a really good salary:

1\. Be really smart

2\. Be willing to do something that's deadly boring to most smart people

Me? I'm a scientist. I'm not gonna write your goddamn binary tree pricing
algorithm _or_ remove your varicose veins _or_ argue about some dull point of
legal text in court. But I'm sure I'd be a lot richer if I did.

(In other news, man, those grapes sure look sour, I'm glad I can't reach 'em.)

~~~
Astrohacker
3\. Be willing to work for a corrupt industry.

~~~
hugh3
Oh, I'm perfectly willing to work in a corrupt industry, just not to do boring
work.

If anyone wants to hire me to build a planet-destroying supervillain weapon,
email in profile.

------
bfung
Programming skill is only a small part of why Wall Street Programmers earn top
salary. The major factor is that their industry is very close to the money,
and their jobs are close to the money. As a result, it's easy to measure
someone's worth in terms of currency. In trading, if your group is making
money, and you can convince everyone else (or just the boss) that you are
worth x% of the profits, then there you go. As your industry and job function
moves further and further away from the money, it gets harder to measure your
performance in terms of raw "dollars", but the game to convince everyone else
your currency worth still applies.

------
orijing
It's true, and it's somewhat discouraging. When I was in my last year in
college, I applied to various types of companies, in different stages of life,
plus a quant fund.

In the end, while the salary/potential bonus for the fund was very enticing
(despite not having graduated yet), I stuck with the middle-of-the-road tech
company. (I also looked at Google and Dropbox but decided to go to FB). Google
was desperate for people, and threw money at everyone who had a Facebook
offer. I like that they offered $$$, but I knew that most people there aren't
compensated as well, which suggested that future compensation might not be as
enticing. Dropbox was actually really cool (the people I met there), and I was
thinking about it a lot, but in the end, I just wanted to stay where I've
been, and work in Palo Alto. (I know, it's weird: All my friends want to work
in SF).

But it sucks, because while everyone thinks I took FB for the money ("It's pre
IPO!"), that's the farthest from the truth. In fact, they're so surprised that
I decided not to work in New York. "Are you stupid? That's more money than any
of your peers make out of college!" Not to mention, the people there I met
through two straight days of technical questions (compared to Google's easy-
peasy 4, 45 minute sessions) were some of the smartest I've met. And I like
working with smart people.

I was afraid that if I'd gone on that route, it would affect me as a person.
Don't get me wrong: I've studied financial institutions and believe that they
produce value, but in the end, it's more awesome to tell friends and family
that I ship products rather than arb derivative contracts. I figured, the
money will come.

What the hell are you gonna do with 500k a year, anyway?

~~~
TheEzEzz
Squirrel it away for 5 years then retire on 5% returns on a million bucks
($50,000) a year?

~~~
orijing
But I don't want to retire! I know that by doing what I love for the rest of
my life, I'll have enough to sustain my basic needs. 500k seems excessive.
It's simultaneously too much for me to spend efficiently for myself, yet too
small for me to do bigger things like fight cancer, invest in education, etc
(like Bill Gates).

~~~
sixtofour
Retire doesn't have to mean slippers, robe and couch. It could mean being free
to pursue interests and goals regardless of the employment landscape.

------
wallflower
I have a friend who works in trading. He's very sharp and very smart and has
friends who work for D.E. Shaw. I used to ask why he didn't go work for D.E.
Shaw and he said that he would never survive the interview gauntlet there. And
most importantly, he would not be smart enough. Now, I know how good at math
my friend is (he used to win Games t-shirts - from the magazine and studies
math at graduate level). And now when I talk to him about HFT, he's like even
if I could bluff my way into an HFT job they'd fire me after three months once
they found out.

My math abilities will never ever approach my friend's. If he is not confident
about his ability, it speaks volumes to me about the ability and sheer
analytical horsepower of some of those working in HFT.

Yes, they may be financial wizards who cause far reaching effects but they are
doing what challenges them.

~~~
georgieporgie
Sounds like your friend might suffer from impostor syndrome.

~~~
cema
Even so, had he joined DEShaw he would still have the syndrome which could
easily affect his work there (as a self-fulfilled prophecy). Happens all the
time.

~~~
mahyarm
Being around people who I feel are better than me just pushes me to become
even better.

------
cletus
I worked for a time in finance and investment banking. Problem-wise it can be
pretty interesting but it's important to distinguish between two classes of
developers.

1\. Traders; and

2\. Non-traders.

Engineers who are traders are typically called "quants" (quantitative traders)
as they write software that employs trading strategies to make money, as one
or more of spread trading (trading between the bid-ask spread), prop trading
(taking a position in the market) and arbitrage (of which HFT is merely the
latest incarnation; some may dispute this definition).

Traders of all kinds have their bonus defined as a percentage of the profit
they make. That percentage can be as high at 10%. In 2007 there were some Wall
Street traders who walked home with $50m+ for the year. I remember seeing an
AmA on reddit from a quant who took home $20m.

While maths is obviously important, it is not (IMHO) as important as
psychology. It takes a special kind of individual who can hold a position
worth _billions_ of dollars and make rational decisions. Human psychology is
typically completely wrong for trading: people hold on to losers too long
("I'll sell when I get my money back") and sell winners too soon.

I know enough about myself to know I could never do that. Some can and they
get rewarded for it.

The second class of engineer, the non-trader, earns a respectable salary with
benefits as compared to other software engineers. They are however the second
worst paid employees at an investment bank (the worst are support people). All
those business types who join IB, assuming they survive, will typically have a
salary and career trajectory that will dwarf that of any engineer within a few
years.

The only way for an engineer to make real money is to be a quant, found a
startup or join an early stage startup. In the last few years the competition
for engineers has heated up to the point where engineers are (or can be) more
adequately compensated for their contribution.

The other thing that happened is the cost of seeding a startup went from $5m
to $50,000 in the last decade, almost all of which is engineer time. This
makes engineers just that much more valuable.

As far as not having some kind of positive impact, working in investment
banking can be exactly that. People like to demonize the finance industry with
some justification but it does a lot of good too.

You want to buy a house? Well the only reason you can get a loan is that
investor (and/or depositor) funds are matched to you. In the last few decades
securitization (MBS ie mortgage-backed securities) have revolutionized this
market. On the other hand, the subprime collapse should, in my mind, lead to
criminal prosecutions across the entire finance and insurance sectors.

Spread trading (or "market making") is also misunderstood. People see market
makers as scalpers when in fact they're providing a valuable service: they're
creating liquidity. The reason you can buy or sell shares at any time (rather
than waiting for a seller or buyer to show up) is because of market makers.

IPOs are a complicated business. They're possible because of the finance
industry as well. Although, curiosity, VC as it exists in the Internet startup
world is almost completely unrelated to the finance sector. It's basically a
byproduct of university endowments.

Still, I think I'm done with that industry (I now work for Google) typically
because IB types aren't, in my experience, very nice people to work with plus
you're near the bottom of the totem pole.

~~~
rgrieselhuber
"The only way for an engineer to make real money is to be a quant, found a
startup or join an early stage startup."

This statement should be included in every CS curriculum.

~~~
Cushman
I think engineers have a different idea of what constitutes "real money". I'm
imagining my graduating classmates who are out interviewing for "good jobs"
with salaries in the mid-five figures.

It makes me remember how slightly awkward I felt every fall semester— I kept
my mouth shut when talking about summer jobs, just because everyone else would
talk about their minimum-wage gig at the ice cream shop or the kayak place. It
just seemed so utterly unapproachable to even mention what I was pulling down
as an "intern", let alone that I was probably getting about a quarter of my
market value, let alone that I was doing something I had no formal training in
and could pretty much drop out of college at any point for a net financial
gain.

I think the statement that should go on every CS curriculum is "Normal people
cannot understand what you do no matter how hard they try. Value yourself a
little higher."

------
MarkPNeyer
they get paid well, but they're also doing work of dubious value. i left
trading because i wanted to do something that i knew would make a positive
impact on the world.

~~~
samlevine
>they get paid well, but they're also doing work of dubious value.

Unless they're getting paid at a rate determined by regulations, by definition
the value of their work is what their employer is willing to pay.

~~~
drp
I believe the "value" being referred to here is social rather than financial.

~~~
sixtofour
Money can serve as a rough indicator of social value. For example, based on
pay, society does not value teachers very much.

~~~
damoncali
Teachers actually make decent money. We clearly don't value soldiers and
McDonalds workers. Wait - then how come we're so violent and fat?

Nevermind.

~~~
william42
We're so violent that the rate of violent crimes has steadily decreased since
1994.

------
bignoggins
This is slightly OT, but can anyone recommend a good book for understanding
the modern finance industry (IB, quant, trading) and its impact on the
economy? Finance in general is just a giant black box to me.

~~~
mikecsh
Inside the Black Box:

[http://www.amazon.com/Inside-Black-Box-Quantitative-
Trading/...](http://www.amazon.com/Inside-Black-Box-Quantitative-
Trading/dp/0470432063)

~~~
Nrsolis
Seconded.

------
gte910h
That hourly rate is pretty crappy for that level and amount of work. (<$100)

~~~
libria
From "Anonymous Cowards" calculations it was more like $74/hr if you consider
overtime/oncall:

 _$500,000 divide by 52 weeks = $9,615 / week_

 _$9,615 / (40 hours + (60 hours overtime x 1.5)) = $73.96 hourly wage_

~~~
spindritf
> I work 12 hours a day on average and do 100 hour weeks.

His average week seems to be closer to 60 hours, 100 hour weeks just happen
once in a while, also I'm pretty sure he gets some time off, just has to
remain available. So it's more like

$500,000 divided by 50 weeks = $10,000 / week

$10,000 / (40 hours + (20 hours overtime x 1.5)) = $142.86 hourly wage

Or it may be completely random and the numbers are made up.

------
scythe
That comes to about $74/hour; he's rich for working 100-hour weeks.

I don't know what good the money is if you don't ever take the time to spend
it, though.

------
benthumb
This fellow's braggadocio is off-putting. Especially the dig he makes at the
expense of Google. I mean, I wish he'd clarify what he's talking about when he
says that the "engineering talent is just not there"... just not where?

~~~
gaius
Ermm, at Google? Seems a simple enough sentence construction to me.

------
paganel
> Another HFT programmer here. I once had to make a run-time modification to
> an algorithm to keep about $100 million from going at a lower price than
> what the traders wanted. Sometimes market conditions change so fast that the
> traders demand the ability to make rapid adjustments to the algorithm.
> They're willing to take the risk. They can't wait for the safe development
> cycle.

Someone should post this next time the issue of "TDD and sudoku-solvers" comes
up on HN.

------
pdovy
Argh, guys like this give the rest of us a bad name. It's ridiculous to claim
that we're somehow universally better than developers at Google or anywhere
else.

One of the big arguments in that Slashdot thread seems to be backlash over
developers bragging about how they change software that handles millions of
dollars in the middle of the day without any testing. Let me tell you, any HFT
firm worth it's salt is very conscious about risk controls. I mean honestly,
what kind of business are you running if you're routinely exposing yourself to
potentially massive losses because of _one_ developers error? Not one that
would be around very long.

I can only speak to where I work, but we are not coding by the seat of our
pants. Yes, traders do make intraday changes to their strategies, but they can
do that because their software is backstopped by a tiered risk infrastructure
that limits the damage their software can do.

------
thinkbohemian
TIL slashdot commenters are fairly mean and biter. Good post, and thanks for
the intelligent and well reasoned comments HN.

------
bwanaaaa
So many intelligent replies here. And to think some of the best coders do not
live in the US - think of Skype (Estonia), Tim-Berners Lee, Linus Torvalds,
etc... Their contributions tower above anything done by any one person on Wall
Street. Yet Wall Street has only contributed to the common good by paying
taxes. Even then they seek to game the system and have also managed to get the
government to give them more than they ever paid (think bailout). Their
scrooge-like aversion to philanthropy, charity, education, or any research to
help the human condition is what annoys. Certainly those of you who code for
the street have food in your belly, but when will you decide to fix your
monstrous employer? They don't even have to know.

~~~
smcl
Linus lives in the US

------
tmsh
I used to work in HFT. From about 1999 (right out of high school) until 2008.

In response to the OP, zedshaw and a couple of others (who make good points),
I'd say:

* obviously if you're good at your job in HFT after a while you don't have to work 100 hour weeks. People wait for you. There are levels of support. You still get woken up once in a while, but not if the firm is well structured and the support training / delegation is good.

* people are right in that the closer you are to the money, the more financial upside (and downside) you usually have.

* there are some very mediocre programmers, like in any sector -- however, they tend to not last as long because the trading side is very demanding (in terms of quality) and that filters down pretty quickly.

* do the people who really know what they're doing in the trading and HFT space have an OCD level of awareness of all levels of their code? sometimes. and it's easy to then conclude that this must not be found in other fields/areas. i can't speak for the rest of the world, but there are exceptions everywhere i've been.

in fact, i wouldn't even say it's the norm that in HFT people are more capable
of deep diving into assembly or whatever. however, basically there are a
handful of people in HFT who have been fortunate enough to grow up in that
industry and have made mistakes without being fired -- and those people are
very bright and careful about their code, and the large purchasing price for
quality/reliability and quickness delivered does affect things on a macro
scale probably. there's also basically a lot of hard-core russian programmers
(from the many different technical universities in russia) who are quite
rigorous with their code and trust the idea of finance more than the idea of
startups or silicon valley even -- but this is probably a generalization (just
my experience perhaps).

most software rewriting is trivial once you know what you have to do. and most
software projects don't 'know what they have to do' until half way through. i
used to work with a guy who made a point of rewriting ALL trading-related code
every two years. another guy didn't trust OSS because he thought it was mostly
hobbyist. they're both sort of wrong -- but it's a different culture/mindset.
and these guys weren't idiots. respectively, they were some of the lead
developers / architects for some of the largest algorithmic shops in chicago.

but my point is that programming for HFT or real-time trading requires that
you really know what you're doing down to each line of code, so that you can
react when things do break (and they will break). if you can't react quickly,
you will eventually not find yourself on interesting projects and you might
even get fired.

so ironically you have to slow down and really get to know how to do
programming very carefully, and then scale that up so that you can react
really quickly later (with something like binary search). this is a useful
thing to practice in some ways. other people probably learn variants of it in
other fields.

* the recession hit large parts of the financial sector pretty hard. i went back and visited chicago somewhat recently (now work in SV). i can't speak to everyone, but if i were an undergraduate or someone trying to figure out career trajectories for the first time, i would feel much more secure in even the startup space than in financial services at this point. because you know most of that is going to be replaced (with automated, distributed technology) in our lifetime.

~~~
sausagefeet
> so ironically you have to slow down and really get to know how to do
> programming very carefully, and then scale that up so that you can react
> really quickly later (with something like binary search). this is a useful
> thing to practice in some ways.

Any tips on how to practice this? I have been slowly discovering, on my own,
ways to write code so that when bugs appear it is apparent which portion of
code it appeared in. This can be as simple as logging often or as complicated
as trying to predict when I might be doing something wrong and put a funky
error message in a place I don't understand so when a bug does happen I can go
to, or rule out, that section of code. Any tips?

~~~
tmsh
Good, stringent mentors (esp., good, rigorous code reviews) are key.

Theoretically, depending on which language you choose, you should be able to
rewrite a bit of code until there is literally not a single character that you
could improve to make it clearer or more efficient.

It's good practice to do this -- eventually it becomes habitual. However, that
doesn't save one from other people's code.

But yeah, there are certain virtuous cycles that work to your advantage if you
take the extra time to try to improve even the most basic code (save one line
here; make one idiom clearer, etc.) -- cascades over time...

~~~
StavrosK
My primary way of ascertaining how bug-free my code is, and the way I've never
seen anyone mention, is by feel. Doesn't anyone else roughly know which code
is likely to cause bugs and which isn't? Whenever I write some code without
thinking it through or take my time, I _know_ it's going to lead to bugs, even
if it's very simple.

On the other hand, I have code I wrote that I trust completely. It turns out
later that these metrics are, indeed, accurate. Does anyone else get this?

------
ebaysucks
1\. Works 12 hours a day on average 2\. Works 100 hour weeks

Stopped reading there.

~~~
hugh3
Yeah, I hate to work an 8.3 day week.

------
dadads
I like how the slashdot discussion rapidly turns into a moral debate.

~~~
redthrowaway
Check out this thread; we're hardly immune.

------
ntkachov
They are specialists. They specialize in optimizing the crap out of very
specific algorithms. I would much rather take a pay cut than work all day on
optimizing stuff. For the money that they pay the work sounds extreamly boring
(imho)

~~~
Kallikrates
Specialization is for insects -Heinlein

------
sliverstorm
Would it be foolish to try to play with HFT (or perhaps "medium" frequency or
something) as a private entity? Or is this something essentially only
available to Wall Street?

Not looking for money, it just seems like it'd be interesting to explore.

~~~
dereg
You'd need access to a) tremendous leverage and b) proximity to the exchange
that you'd want to trade on (the profit opportunities disappear when faced
with greater latency).

------
Astrohacker
So he does what any good programmer does, but he earns 5x as much. One reason
they earn so much is that the companies they work for have corrupt ties to the
Federal Reserve and the US government, and when the money supply is inflated,
they get all the new money, and can thus pay their programmers (and all
employees/partners/shareholders/owners) with the new money. Their salaries
come at the expense of people who don't get the new money, like pensioners.

~~~
hugh3
Fun fact: the people on the internet who talk about economics the most appear
to be the people who understand it the least.

This is unusual. I mean, the people on the internet who talk about _Batman_
the most generally turn out to know a lot more about Batman than I do. And the
people on the internet who talk about tae kwan do the most turn out to know
more about tae kwan do than I do. But for economics it is, for some reason,
the other way around.

~~~
Astrohacker
Fun fact: Everyone knows the finance industry is highly corrupt, but point out
the mechanism of the corruption and you will be downvoted.

~~~
Jd
Your analysis is a bit superficial. The government connections keep them from
being regulated but don't adequately explain how they can skim so much off the
top. For instance, how do the big firms (e.g. Goldman) manage to get into oil
futures, create new fangled products that others will buy, get everyone to
follow them into the same market sector, raise the price of oil, pocket
billions of dollars, and leave the market before it goes south. It's actually
hundreds of years of accumulated know-how in a somewhat needed but mostly
bogus market sector -- of which the first priority is how to convince very
intelligent and hard working people that they are doing some admirable or at
least neutral when they are in fact destroying the economic base of the
country they are in, siphoning all of the talent into meaningless and
counterproductive tasks, and pouring their money into the political machine in
order to increase corruption so they will never be held accountable for their
actions.

The short answer is an excellent understanding of human psychology leading to
good marketing. Most criminals think they aren't doing something wrong. Most
people can be trained to do very damaging (even evil) actions by acculturation
and habituation. Americans have been re-educated in the past fifty years to
think that all sorts of things are okay that they never would have thought
when we were the industrial superpower that invented and produced everything
imaginable (e.g. car, plane, tv, space shuttles, etc.). Of course, most of
these changes in American thinking aren't politically correct to mention.

Nowadays people either go into finance or work on some little web startup in
the hopes they will make a billion dollars -- but at least that is better than
being a patent troll. The AirBnB scandal is in fact a great example of the
present dynamic. It is a great service on top of existing infrastructure.
That's basically all Americans do these days -- a service economy on top of
actual products that are increasingly being produced elsewhere. Sometimes
those services are good, sometimes not so good, but barely anyone actually
builds anything that is made to last -- nor do they seem to care.

Wake up America!

~~~
Astrohacker
I agree with everything you said with one important exception: The finance
industry is not corrupt because of a lack of regulations. It is corrupt
because of the regulations. The fact that Federal Reserve has been regulated
into existence is a very deep problem, as is the fact that fractional reserve
banks are always protected from failing by regulations. Regulations are the
problem, not the answer.

~~~
Jd
Currency is regulated into existence. Someone has to print it. Like it or not,
there are all sorts of natural monopolies which exist in nature. The first and
foremost is a monopoly on violence by the state. This is, in fact, demanded by
the citizens who have a lot to lose if companies et al. were also allowed to
pursue their interests by brandishing weapons. Thus, the first regulation is
that companies cannot pursue their interests via force.

Thus, we are already out of the perfect world imagined by Austrian economists
and exposing the simplistic lie that their worldview entails -- the social
union that is the state is not merely a machine but, in the American republic,
exists by the consent of the governed. Consequently, it has the power to issue
additional regulations deemed to be in the interests of the governed, of which
one might be that there be a single national currency, a single national
language, etc. This is because our state is rooted in a Lockean social
contract (with undoubtedly a good sprinkling of Hobbes).

Now, the precise nature of the regulations and whether or not they serve the
people and whether or not they are consistent with the founding documents and
accompanying intentions of the Republic is not always clear. Nonetheless, I
think it is clear enough that at least in the American republic (if not a
Randian inspired anti-state) that regulations are sometimes an answer to
various problems.

Consequently, I would argue that if the SEC was able to attract and retain top
talent and execute on its mandate it would have been able to stop this sub-
prime nonsense in its tracks long before the present bubble burst and infected
the rest of the economy with its TARPy bile. This is exactly why it existed --
because history tells us that banks like Goldman cannot be trusted to regulate
themselves and act within the interests of the American people.

~~~
Astrohacker
> Currency is regulated into existence.

Nope. Gold and bitcoins come from the market.

~~~
rayiner
So the purpose of currency is to serve as a proxy for goods and services. The
basic question of monetary regulation is: "how much currency do we need?"

The Fed system actually somewhat regulate the currency supply based on the
market. When you take a loan to start a business, new currency is created at
the same time that a new productive enterprise is created. Gold and Bitcoin
don't come from the market at all. The amount of Bitcoin added to the economy
has nothing to do with the underlying economy --- its based on an arbitrary
formula.

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nazgulnarsil
"the way I make money is opaque to people with no economics background"

"rabble rabble moralizing rabble rabble!"

you people do realize that normal people think the same thing about software
developers right?

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eurohacker
its when simple quants make bonuses 20M per year - causing worldwide economic
crisis - and the country is defaulting

then you think that something must be wrong with the American economic policy
and tax system

