HoweyCoins – An educational tool to alert investors to possible fraud • Hacker News Board

Re: HoweyCoins – An educational tool to alert investors to possible fraud

#61

Post by Veelox » Wed, May 16, 2018, 8:55 PM UTC

moeadham wrote: post #31

I really want to meet the team at the SEC who put this together. The level of trolling the ICO community is incredible. Not sure if anyone else opened the white paper, but it is acutally better than most of the ICO papers I read in general. There are gems like: > "Upon a successful ICO, the nondisclosure agreements terminate and we will be able to disclose the largest network of travel partners" > "we expect a biddin…

I think you missed the best gem, under the Stay Tuned section

> "Once in, we will provide expert timing advice to make sure tier 1 and limited offer tier 2 participants maximize immediate gains with a pre-planned pump to occur shortly after the pre-ico phase ends. Our past two pumps have doubled value for the period immediately after the pump for returns of over 225%."

Re: HoweyCoins – An educational tool to alert investors to possible fraud

#62

Post by s73v3r_ » Wed, May 16, 2018, 9:01 PM UTC

apo wrote: post #47

The SEC has missed the point entirely. Savvy investors want proof that the ICO organizer is running a scam, and that it has legs. The SEC has merely created a playbook, not a fraud deterrent. The ICO scam is a genre of investor literature. As such certain obligatory signs and conventions will be present: - the countdown (made its first big appearance with the Ethereum crowdsale) - use of the term "blockchain technolo…

>Savvy investors want proof that the ICO organizer is running a scam, and that it has legs.

Savvy investors are likely not what this is targeting; they're generally savvy enough to skip terrible offerings. Those that were thinking of mortgaging their house to buy BTC when it was up late last year are.

Re: HoweyCoins – An educational tool to alert investors to possible fraud

#63

Post by s73v3r_ » Wed, May 16, 2018, 9:02 PM UTC

gowld wrote: post #26

It's a nice idea, but the meat of the site ( https://www.investor.gov/howeycoins ) is far too complicated for an ICO investor to read and understand.

If that's the case, then perhaps they shouldn't be investing in ICOs?

Re: HoweyCoins – An educational tool to alert investors to possible fraud

#64

Post by claytonjy » Wed, May 16, 2018, 9:08 PM UTC

snissn wrote: post #54

I just saw and clicked an ad for this ICO and it looks just like Howey Coin's site - https://icerockmining.io/en.html (I don't know whether this is a scam or not, i don't recommend investing or avoiding it, I just wanted to point out how similar the website looks to the howeycoins website! DYOR) (Being overly neutral for its own sake here, but it seems very questionable)

My hot take is there's no way that's even remotely legitimate. Justification for projected ROI in FAQ includes "The question - do you believe in Bitcoin or not? In our case, we strongly believe in BTC BTC" and "ROI of 439% per year is easy to explain thanks to 20% monthly reinvestment"

Re: HoweyCoins – An educational tool to alert investors to possible fraud

#65

Post by Faaak » Wed, May 16, 2018, 9:12 PM UTC

snissn wrote: post #54

I just saw and clicked an ad for this ICO and it looks just like Howey Coin's site - https://icerockmining.io/en.html (I don't know whether this is a scam or not, i don't recommend investing or avoiding it, I just wanted to point out how similar the website looks to the howeycoins website! DYOR) (Being overly neutral for its own sake here, but it seems very questionable)

Looks like pure bullshit or utter incompetence. Yeah, your mountain is actually at 12°C, but with 50kW or more of processing power, you're actually creating an oven if you haven't got ventilation or cooling. Stupid

Re: HoweyCoins – An educational tool to alert investors to possible fraud

#66

Post by JumpCrisscross » Wed, May 16, 2018, 9:19 PM UTC

Alex3917 wrote: post #52

dane-pgp wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Under the Howey Test, a transaction is an investment contract if: > 1. It is an investment of money > 2. There is an expectation of profits from the investment > 3. The investment of money is in a common enterprise > 4. Any profit comes from the efforts of a promoter or third party I don't know if the crypto-currency community have a widely accepted view of how this applies to specific currencies, but I feel that "…

Most people in the crypto community know that the majority of ICOs are illegal securities offerings. And by ‘in the community’ I mean people who run funds and regularly go to industry events with other fund managers, not people subscribed to random crypto subreddits. People in the industry generally know who is dirty and likely to get indicted.

> Most people in the crypto community know that the majority of ICOs are illegal securities offerings

The SEC has already said as much in respect of ICOs.

Re: HoweyCoins – An educational tool to alert investors to possible fraud

#67

Post by vishakh82 » Wed, May 16, 2018, 9:35 PM UTC

We already did something similar - http://securitiesandexchangecoin.tech/! SECS token - the first attempt by the government to bring blockchains to regulation!

Re: HoweyCoins – An educational tool to alert investors to possible fraud

#68

Post by paulpauper » Wed, May 16, 2018, 9:37 PM UTC

So if ICO frauds are so easy why aren't there more of them> The answer is, promoting an ICO is extremely difficult and expensive. The market is not that big

Re: HoweyCoins – An educational tool to alert investors to possible fraud

#69

Post by Alex3917 » Wed, May 16, 2018, 9:41 PM UTC

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #66

Alex3917 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people in the crypto community know that the majority of ICOs are illegal securities offerings. And by ‘in the community’ I mean people who run funds and regularly go to industry events with other fund managers, not people subscribed to random crypto subreddits. People in the industry generally know who is dirty and likely to get indicted.

> Most people in the crypto community know that the majority of ICOs are illegal securities offerings The SEC has already said as much in respect of ICOs.

As far as I can tell, the SEC statements have changed almost nothing. Most people understood the situation even before the SEC said anything, some people still refuse to acknowledge reality even afterwards.

I have yet to meet anyone who has changed their opinion on the legality of ICOs as a result of the SEC statements. In this respect professional fund managers are basically no different than redditors, where you show them an SEC statement and they see whatever they want to see in it.

Re: HoweyCoins – An educational tool to alert investors to possible fraud

#70

Post by spookthesunset » Wed, May 16, 2018, 9:47 PM UTC

ddtaylor wrote: post #2

To be fair to many ICOs they don't make most of these claims. They are cherry picking the worst of the worst and presenting a straw man. I agree the crypto currency space is messed up but I think this could be done better.

> To be fair to many ICOs they don't make most of these claims.

"Many" == 99%. There are no non-scam ICO's.... even the ones that aren't intentionally run as scams are, ultimately, scams.

ICO's don't invest in a company, they "invest" in a brand new "currency" that somehow magically reflects the value of the "company" that created them. Why anybody would buy into this is beyond me...