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SEC Emergency Action Halts PlexCoin ICO

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121–130 of 142 posts

Re: SEC Emergency Action Halts PlexCoin ICO

#121

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?

Woah, back up here. Cryptocurrencies are not unregulated, they are very much regulated. Those people you are referring to like the fact that they are self-regulating. If they were completely unregulated then bitcoin would have never gotten off of the ground.

I personally think that cryptocurrencies could do for a lot more regulation, not just from governments but also from public advocacy groups. We need to be carful about the kind of regulations.

Re: SEC Emergency Action Halts PlexCoin ICO

#122
post #72
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Totally disagree. We have to encourage as many experiments as we reasonably can to continue to advance / solve some of the big problems we are currently facing. Over regulation limits innovation. We should only look to regulate when there is obvious and catastrophic harm. We can regulate after the fact, once we better understand the emerging system and the impacts it has. If potential harm is big, then it makes sense…

> Why should you decide what I do with my money (assuming it harms no one)?

Who decides what harms others and what doesn't?

Re: SEC Emergency Action Halts PlexCoin ICO

#123

"PlexCoin" also seems like a name likely to run into trademark issues with the makers of the media management/DVR software Plex (plex.tv).

That's not really how trademark works. It is only similar/same industries where that applies. The rule of thumb is consumer confusion. Is an average person going to mix up the 2? In this case, the answer is likely No.

Given the state of the market these days before clicking in to the article I actually assumed the Plex Media folks were getting in on ICO madness

Re: SEC Emergency Action Halts PlexCoin ICO

#124
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tend to agree. Every ICO page mainly struggles with number 3. I never get what they are selling, probably because they're not selling anything other than the idea of buying in to their ICO. Let's take a (somewhat snarky and definitely superficial) look at a few of the "top gainers" & market cap from https://coinmarketcap.com/gainers-losers/ (as of Dec 2nd) Gainers: 1. Petrodollar.. Website isn't even an owned domai…

Tether is not an ICO and quite clear what it does. It is supposed to be a token that pegged to USD to facilitate the moving of USD via the blockchain instead of having to bother with the pain and fees of banks. Its market cap rises as more USD is deposited into their banks.

Wow, really? I don't know how you can phrase that objective without admitting to money laundering (or some ancillary financial crime).

Re: SEC Emergency Action Halts PlexCoin ICO

#125

The AMF had already found him guilty of the same and barred him from soliciting, directly or indirectly, investors for PlexCoin [0]. It's not the first time he gets in trouble, he had a lending "company" that was investigated and was barred from participating anymore [1]. All links in French sorry. [0]: https://lautorite.qc.ca/grand-public/salle-de-presse/actuali... [1]: https://lautorite.qc.ca/grand-public/salle-de-…

This appears to be an English version of [1]: https://lautorite.qc.ca/en/general-public/media-centre/news/...

Re: SEC Emergency Action Halts PlexCoin ICO

#126

Plexcoin, summarized: >"Security is very important to us. That's why we invented a new type of encryption system based on your private virtual currency address, so it is unencyptable." Come up with a new encryption system and tell the world it's unencryptable... I'll just leave this one hanging. Source: Plexcoin blog ( https://www.plexcoin.com/blog/important-statement )

Well, it says "undecryptable" now...

".... based on your private virtual currency address, so it is undecryptable."

But that makes me think it cannot be decrypted, which is pretty bad for an encryption system. If you cannot decrypt the data, it might as well be random noise ...

Re: SEC Emergency Action Halts PlexCoin ICO

#127

> [The SEC] obtained an emergency asset freeze to halt a fast-moving Initial Coin Offering (ICO) fraud that raised up to $15 million from thousands of investors since August by falsely promising a 13-fold profit in less than a month. To me, the PlexCoin homepage [1] is indistinguishable from all the other ICO homepages I've seen. - bootstrap homepage: check - beautiful graphics with actors and coins: check - unclear…

Their slogan is pretty funny: "The next cryptocurrency." Like the last one, only newer.

Re: SEC Emergency Action Halts PlexCoin ICO

#128
post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People can already make a risky investment, by just buying public stock on the public markets.

So there's no reason why they shouldn't be able to make other risky investments, right?

The regulations are more about regulating the ability to make money off of naive investors, in my view. You should be able to offer the ability to make risky investments to people, but there should be enforcement mechanisms to ensure you're not misleading people.

Re: SEC Emergency Action Halts PlexCoin ICO

#129

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.

I think that's a very insightful statement. Right now regular people only have a few different options to invest in: 1. Stocks 2. Bonds 3. Cash 4. Your own bootstrapped business 5. Cryptocurrencies 6. Lottery The first 2 are obviously limited growth opportunities... Corporations are already massive, people will never get the 100x or 1000x returns that they need to actually notice any lifestyle difference... And even…

Why do you think that it's a reasonable expectation that an economy offers a 1000X multiplier on your money? Where is this value supposed to come from? By altering the means of exchanging capital a significant number of people get 1000X richer?

Those kinds of gains can only come at the expense of other "investors".

Re: SEC Emergency Action Halts PlexCoin ICO

#130
post #51

This is a typical SEC action against a get-rich-quick Ponzi-type scheme. Read the SEC's note on Ponzi schemes.[1] The original Charles Ponzi only promised a 50% return in 90 days. Bernie Madoff promised about 10-15% a year. This "ICO" promised 1300% in 30 days. [1] https://www.sec.gov/fast-answers/answersponzihtm.html

If you can get in early and you recognize it for what it is, a Ponzi scheme can be just another rational investment. Madoff's clients made good returns for a long time. From the perspective of each long term individual investor, the problem was that they did not fold and walk away from the table with their winnings after a few years. The scheme would have survived a few of those, and maybe some investors did. None of…

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