Prediction: the reason why Robinhood has been forcefully closing out client's GME positions will turn out to be because some or all of those GME positions didn't actually exist.
Unlike Bitcoin, there's no way for average investors to know if the numbers on their screen correspond to actual shares. You need crypto for that.
I'm not 100% confident this type of fraud and/or incompetence is happening. But I'll give it >50% probability.
@pete Didn't even think of this but of course it makes sense and is highly likely. 🤦♂️
@GrandVizierOfMalta Don't underestimate the chance it's happening due to incompetence! Financial systems are ridiculously complex, and there have been many cases where shares got double-booked.
@lucash_dev @GrandVizierOfMalta I remember once getting shown the Holy Excel Spreadsheet that was the sole authoritative record of share ownership for a multi-billion dollar fund.
They did one thing right at least: they kept the spreadsheet on an air-gapped computer sitting in the middle of an empty room with a dedicated security system to keep track of every single person who entered and left. It was probably backed up religiously too.
But still... Excel... 😱
@pete @GrandVizierOfMalta not to brag, but i’ve seen worse.
like billions in fees controlled by an MS Access DB full of custom code that only a single guy knew how to use — and the guy was a few months away from retirement.
They ended up just not charging the fees. A year later they realized that was a mistake and spent millions to develop a new system from scratch.
@pete @GrandVizierOfMalta though to be fair I think something fishy was going on, it might be just 90% incompetence.
@lucash_dev @pete LOLOL. Whoa. that's bad.
@pete @lucash_dev The incompetence is monumental!
@pete @GrandVizierOfMalta oh man and it’s all closed source code only ever read by a few people. I used to write software for banks years ago. scary stuff, i’m glad i left it alive