Advice from a personal banker that has been in the banking industry for 35 years

So my mother-in-law who has been with multiple banks but overall has been in the industry for about 35 years had dinner with us Sunday night.

She told us how a women had came into the bank to deposit a very large amount of money from a inheritance she had just received. They began to talk and she explained she will be taking 100% of it and putting it into Bitcoin and other cryptos. Her being the client my mother-in-law could not give her opinion but instead only recommended she speak to a financial advisor and was immediately shut down saying she had already made up her mind.

After my mother-in-law told us this story she began to tell us how stupid this woman was and how unsafe crypto was and that it because you were not getting a physical representation of the value that it was worthless and because it was money not in a bank how it could be stolen easily by anyone that wanted to. She then told us how disappointed whoever left her the inheritance would be if they knew she would be”throwing away the money like that”.

The whole time my wife just keeps patting my lap giving me the signal to just listen and not say anything. After the whole story all I said was “that’s cool” and changed the subject. My wife was very proud that i didn’t turn it into a debate.

So anyways today she told my wife and I that she had been on the phone for a few hours because someone got into her bank account and took out a few thousand dollars and she was trying to get it sorted out. I looked her straight in the eyes and said “and here I thought that money was only safe if it was in the bank.”