I def prefer the self-regulation solutions since governments don't understand crypto. And I also think that it's useful to remember that these moves might have some second-order effects. In the 90s, the TradFi world faced the same problem. Many Internet companies did fast IPOs, and a significant amount of them were flops. Since then, the US financial markets have become strict via the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, we got enough big tech companies that M&A became an exit option as well, plus investors got more hesitant to put money in some unknown companies. Raising the bar to do an IPO was good for the legitimacy of the tech market, but it also had other consequences. Today, most of the funding for tech startups happens in the private market via angels & VCs. This also means that most gains happen in the private market. In the '90s, everyone could buy eBay stock for $0.78, and if they held until today, they'd make almost 100X. Same with Amazon. Today - with a few notable exceptions like Tesla or Nvidia - there are fewer opportunities like that because companies do IPOs at much higher market caps than before. So, we risk limiting the high returns opportunity for retail investors. And this btw already happens in crypto without regulations, and Cobie wrote about it extensively - that's why retail puts money in memecoins. I do hope that we will somehow balance these two - investor safety and the ability to generate high returns.
Yeah, but also all of this said, you have Amazon which had the opportunity to cash in on short term gains, and simply didn‘t. Jeff Bezos is even known for being ultra long term, running and growing Amazon at a loss for years. Yeah, he could have exited his share. But what determined his success was his persistence. However, if you think about it, there‘s also Elon which exited really early and re-invested his money into other ventures…