Why is this a bad thing? The psychological draw of gambling is very strong. Independent of execution, it seems like this product harnesses that aspect of human psychology to get people interested in saving money. Governments have utilized this same model effectively to entice citizens to save and invest: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Premium_Bond
Who is paying for the prizes? I would wager a wild guess that it’s the bank, and they’re probably doing it instead of offering a decent interest rate.
Also, trying to teach people to save money by teaching them to gamble is… not a good idea. Any number of reputable banks would love to teach someone to save money, it’s just not nearly as fun as gambling.
YC investors, like all other investors, are only interested in making money. You don't make money by paying people twice as much interest as everyone else. Something is fishy.
For what it's worth the claim is "2x the national average in interest", the national average in interest is incredibly low as many people have their money in checking/savings accounts at large banks with near 0% interest rates. It's very possible to give people twice the national average and still make money on the spread between that and the ~5.5% short term treasury yield.
Marcus by Goldman Sachs claims their rate is "8x the national average" at 4.40% and I'm sure they're making money just fine too.
Not all investors are only interested in making money. That's why so many investment vehicles take into account ESG scores. Or why people refuse to invest in cigarette companies.
Indeed, my first used car that was otherwise in good repair and wasn't cheap had a recurring carpet beetle infestation that popped up each spring. Hundreds of the things crawling out of every crevice, and there was no way to know about it until months after I had purchased the vehicle. Could never find the source, but got it managed with yearly treatment. It makes me quite reluctant to buy used cars again.
I've occasionally heard of those kinds of problems from acquaintances, but I've heard and seen so many more newly introduced defect problems and individual car misassembled problems. On average, I think a used car is a car that has been debugged under warranty by someone else with its design critiqued collectively.
The discount for the possibility that the last owner was in the bottom 20% seems to not take into account the positive aspects of a car that is at least 2 years old, 80% of the time.
