How else would you invest your money? Index funds in a stock market whose price is going hockey stick?
With banks out of the business of loaning people money there are genuine opportunities out there where people can put money to work. I imagine he is not going to be gambling on ICOs but investing in profitable companies.
I'd invest in equities, commercial real estate, and residential real estate development.
Most tech companies looking for angel investment or VC money are just other versions of information selling (that is, information about people) or social interaction or both. They aren't worth "giving back" to, from either a tech perspective (from the perspective that they'll possibly advance technology) or from an investment perspective (they'll almost certainly perform worse than even conservative investment).
Are you saying you can expect 10%/year with your money in the stock market? No stockbroker will tell you that, it is more like 6%-8% over a 10 year time frame. And you have to have the courage to watch your balance drop 50% over a 1-2 year time span and still stay in.
My own accounts have earned over 11.5%/year, for the past 10 years. This was through the financial crisis, where I did see huge drops like you describe, held, and continued to invest.
If you put some time into it and learn how to properly invest, yes.
If you made a million today, you probably want to just keep it in an account and wait until a 20%+ correction happens before buying in, though -- it's been quite while since the last significant drop.
Yeah, exactly. Profitable VC investment is often described as a numbers game, where you need to make maybe hundreds of investments to smooth out the inevitable numerous failures. 4x $250k angel investments is basically a long shot gamble. On the flip side, if you do spread your investments and invest in lots of companies, you as an individual aren't going to be able to have enough time to help or advise any one startup in a meaningful way.
With banks out of the business of loaning people money there are genuine opportunities out there where people can put money to work. I imagine he is not going to be gambling on ICOs but investing in profitable companies.