Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

SEC Emergency Action Halts PlexCoin ICO

sec.gov

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 142 posts

Re: SEC Emergency Action Halts PlexCoin ICO

#41

Post by canadaduane »

nikolay wrote: post #30

All ICOs should be banned! When you see all these scams around, you start appreciating regulation, law, and order more! I am not sure why so many engineers today are into anarchy when it's entirely against the basis of computer science and engineering in general! I get the idea about the distributed systems for higher resilience, but going against the merits of states and governments is just childish!

I agree with your statement of appreciating law and order, but I think there is also a general malaise surrounding who gets to benefit from all of the currently "legal" financial arrangements. There's a feeling that the little guy is left out--or at most, given the dregs after private equity deals, large mergers, and IPOs go down. ICOs--while risky and uncertain--also offer a way of taking action without waiting for governments to "approve."

Re: SEC Emergency Action Halts PlexCoin ICO

#42

Post by [deleted] »

libertymcateer wrote: post #28
hectorr1 wrote: post #15

Good. The first step to establishing a regulatory framework is defining boundaries of acceptable behavior by shutting down egregious violations.

What about the folks who love cryptocurrency specifically because of the fact it is unregulated? Are we not doing that anymore?

[deleted]

Re: SEC Emergency Action Halts PlexCoin ICO

#43

Post by berberous »

beager wrote: post #36
berberous wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Scam =/= terrible investment idea. Tezos and Filecoin, for example, are not scams. They are serious projects that are attempting to bring something useful to the market. That said, they raised wayyy too much money, and may end up being terrible investments that don't return any profit, but that applies to many startups as well. PlexCoin offered guaranteed 1300% returns or your money back. That is a pure scam.

Just because something is a good idea doesn't mean that it wasn't conceived or promoted specifically to scam people out of their money. Not speaking to Filecoin or Tezos specifically, but if something is a really good idea, why not take VC money or bootstrap it?

Many reasons. Here's a couple I can think of off the top of my head:

1) VC money comes with strings, and founders don't like to have the sword of Damocles hanging over their heads. (Although I think those founders are misguided, as I think most companies benefit from oversight).

2) ICO money is cheaper and plentiful. If it's available, why not take it? This is especially problematic when you have multiple companies pursuing the same idea. Take using the blockchain to create a data storage market. Filecoin raised $200mm+. Imagine they instead raised $3mm from VCs, and another competitor with less qualms raised $200mm. They would now have to compete with someone wayyyy better capitalized than they are. In the tech world, one company often wins the market. Being second could kill your company.

Is Uber scamming middle east sovereign wealth funds because they are letting them invest on crazy terms, when they could just as easily start turning a profit or go public? I think a company has a duty to: (1) disclose things honestly, (2) warn people of the risks, and (3) consider the danger of raising too much public money on the success of their venture. Beyond that, if investors wants to dump cheap money on them, why is it a 'scam' to accept?

Re: SEC Emergency Action Halts PlexCoin ICO

#44

Post by quirkot »

libertymcateer wrote: post #35
fragsworth wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Regulation" isn't a one-dimensional thing. You can simultaneously hate scam ICOs and still not want most other aspects of cryptocurrencies to be regulated. There are lots of different regulations that different people find acceptable.

I agree - I'm an attorney. But are we picking and choosing here? Because my bet is, and has been for quite sometime, that when all is said and done, the 'regulations' we are talking about are those that already exist and are applied to securities.

Yes, we are picking and choosing. We’re picking out individuals that are motivated to love unregulated financial instruments because it’s easier to defraud the populace and choosing to shut them down

Re: SEC Emergency Action Halts PlexCoin ICO

#45

Post by quirkot »

finkin1 wrote: post #8

> PlexCorps marketed and sold securities called PlexCoin on the internet to investors in the U.S. and elsewhere, claiming that investments in PlexCoin would yield a 1,354 percent profit in less than 29 days. Is this claim the crux of the securities violation?

It's effectively putting knowingly false information in your prospectus. I think that it is the crux, but IANAL

Re: SEC Emergency Action Halts PlexCoin ICO

#46

Post by api »

libertymcateer wrote: post #28
hectorr1 wrote: post #15

Good. The first step to establishing a regulatory framework is defining boundaries of acceptable behavior by shutting down egregious violations.

What about the folks who love cryptocurrency specifically because of the fact it is unregulated? Are we not doing that anymore?

I flagrant scams run unchecked eventually crypto will get the reputation of being "just for scams." This will harm it in the long term greatly.

Re: SEC Emergency Action Halts PlexCoin ICO

#47

Post by [deleted] »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #14
root_axis wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't envision a future where they are anything but a scam. The tokens have no legal or economic connection to any business activity produced by the token creators so I don't see why any ICO token would be worth any more than any other besides hype.

They seem like Kickstarter bred with stocks - mostly an unenforceable promise of future products/services/magic to the users who buy the initial coins. An employee where I work recommended we do our own ICO, but for the life of me, I couldn't figure out what it was that the coins would eventually be exchanged for. Maybe I'm just too dumb - he's objectively smarter than me, I'll freely admit - but it seemed not too di…

[deleted]

Re: SEC Emergency Action Halts PlexCoin ICO

#48

Post by nikolay »

canadaduane wrote: post #41
nikolay wrote: post #30

All ICOs should be banned! When you see all these scams around, you start appreciating regulation, law, and order more! I am not sure why so many engineers today are into anarchy when it's entirely against the basis of computer science and engineering in general! I get the idea about the distributed systems for higher resilience, but going against the merits of states and governments is just childish!

I agree with your statement of appreciating law and order, but I think there is also a general malaise surrounding who gets to benefit from all of the currently "legal" financial arrangements. There's a feeling that the little guy is left out--or at most, given the dregs after private equity deals, large mergers, and IPOs go down. ICOs--while risky and uncertain--also offer a way of taking action without waiting for…

I don't think the government has to approve all startups funded via StartEngine or Republic, which do crowdfunding along with many others.

Re: SEC Emergency Action Halts PlexCoin ICO

#49

Post by modeless »

People might not be so eager to dump money into these scam investments if the government hadn't strangled legal and regulated equity crowdfunding. The SEC needs to look at ways to allow people to invest in legitimate opportunities, not just shut down scams. The JOBS act has been a bust in this regard as far as I can see.

Re: SEC Emergency Action Halts PlexCoin ICO

#50

Post by nikolay »

jsloss wrote: post #40
nikolay wrote: post #30

All ICOs should be banned! When you see all these scams around, you start appreciating regulation, law, and order more! I am not sure why so many engineers today are into anarchy when it's entirely against the basis of computer science and engineering in general! I get the idea about the distributed systems for higher resilience, but going against the merits of states and governments is just childish!

Ah yes, how dare we poke and prod at the validity of current governmental systems and regulations. That feudal era was such great times, if we had only not gone against the merits of the government of the day./s There is little doubt that many ICO's are 'scams', and some people will get hurt financially because of it. The challenge with regulations is, it's easy to quantify the harm they try to stop, but it's harder…

There's no perfect system, but what we have right now is better than anything from the past, and it's only getting better. Anyway, I think under-regulation is worse than over-regulation.
Post reply on HN