Ask HN: If you had unlimited money for 30 minutes, what would you do?

I think this post, and that people responded "seriously" to it, is a pretty good sign people are starting to lose their shit.

I'm not saying you should disobey the shelter-in-place/etc orders, but this is a bit much.

You're asking the sort of question practically every kid in primary school has asked or been asked, but you're making it "more real" because you can't just buy a house in 30 minutes.

For a follow up will you ask what everyone's favourite food is, and then respond and tell them why it's bad for them? Or perhaps ask what everyone's favourite colour is and then psychoanalyse the responses?

HN isn't reddit.. or a school yard.

Hard to say. On the one hand, part of me thinks it'd be best to spend it on marketing, since you could get a lot of attention for future projects if you could lock in say, a few decades worth of ad space on major publications and social networking sites.

Also:

* Obviously buy a ton of stock and crypto.

* Use it as an incentive for people to follow you on social media, join your site/SaaS service, etc. We've all seem those folks claiming to offer $1000 to whoever follows them on Twitter, a legit version with a few hundred thousand dollars per person would rake in followers like crazy.

* Transfer as much of it to other people as possible, on the assumption at least a few of them will pay at least some of it back.

* Put money in various online gambling sites, since hey, whatever I actually make in winnings is my cash.

* Go on a general spending spree, since 30 minutes is still plenty of time to buy whatever random consumer good or piece of entertainment media you'd ever want.

* Pay people to work on things I want done on an 'all money up front' basis. If they turn out to be scammers, that's not my problem.

I would buy Berkshire Hathaway for whatever price they ask, being sure to tell them we need the money in escrow and a commitment within 30 minutes.

Then I'd spend the rest of my life figuring out what to do with Berkshire Hathaway.

Unless you are doing a zell pay or similar thing which transfers money from person to person instantly, there is nothing much you can do. Zell pay has daily limit of 2000.

If you want to transfer money to another account, it would take more than 30 mins for the transfer to happen. Buying stocks needs 2/3 days for the settlement or 2/3 days for the transfer to the brokerage account.

Even if you bought something with debit card it takes longer than 30 mins to settle that transaction.

I would just visit a branch and get a cashier's check. Most bang for the buck and there's no limit.

Perform a Scrooge McDuck impersonation! https://www.buzzfeed.com/kristinchirico/things-you-didnt-kno...

I'd donate all of it.

5 minutes to search through the best bang for my buck, then drop 100 million to the top dozen or so until my time was up.

- Transfer to each of my accounts up to the daily limits.

- Buy a bunch of silver and gold coins.

- Call a big scrapyard and buy as much copper as possible.

It's a bit curious that most (only 5 so far) answers mention things like daily limits to each of your own bank accounts, when the question specifically stated you are allowed to utilize your existing personal connections (friends and coworkers).

Why would you not tell as many friends and family as possible about transferring the max daily limit to all of their accounts? Several ways to spin / think about this:

- "Can you send me back some of that money later?"

- Most friends/coworkers who are decent people will probably send you back half of it. For those that don't:

- They are probably really in need, in which case you did a good deed helping them out, or;

- They are bad people. Cheap price to pay (actually, free to you) to see their real side.

Depending on how many people respond to your mass sms/IMs quickly enough, you can probably send the daily limit to anywhere from 100 to 500 people. This is probably more impactful than giving yourself X amount of money.

And then if you have time left, there's donations to charity which you can typically use credit cards / bank transfers for (instantly usually?). Donate maximum limit to every charity you can think of. Maybe you'll even contribute to the development of a COVID vaccine?

I'd send daily limit amount to each citizen in the country, as a one time bonus

Buy stock.