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HoweyCoins – An educational tool to alert investors to possible fraud

howeycoins.com

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

#131

Post by skywhopper »

will_brown wrote: post #99
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…

In its hubris the SEC forgot one thing, the most important thing, the only thing...yes the SEC knows the law well, but this is smart contracts, Case Law/precedent/stare decisis don’t apply to ICOs... the code is the law

Fraud is against the law, even if you write a contract for how you're going to do it.

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

#132

Post by tommorris »

will_brown wrote: post #99
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…

In its hubris the SEC forgot one thing, the most important thing, the only thing...yes the SEC knows the law well, but this is smart contracts, Case Law/precedent/stare decisis don’t apply to ICOs... the code is the law

Good luck arguing that novel legal theory when in front of a judge on a fraud or tax evasion trial.

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

#133

Post by ddtaylor »

hsljekskfh wrote: post #14
ddtaylor wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I met the guy who made DOGE at a conference in Portland and he was hilariously apologetic to everyone about having accidentally made (at the time) one of the most popular coins.

there’s a great npr interview with him. apparently he never owned more than $75 worth of doge at today’s value.

Anyone looking here is the NPR interview https://www.npr.org/2018/02/08/584181886/cryptocurrencies-ar...

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

#134

Post by ddtaylor »

dragonwriter wrote: post #122
ddtaylor wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many ICOs actually claim to be backed by the US government? Tether and some others claimed at one time to be redeemable for USD. Also, FWIW I'm not condoning or supporting Tether.

Claiming to be redeemable isn't claiming to be backed by the US government. (USD is backed by the US government, but “redeemable FOR USD” isn't “USD”.)

I agree, Tether is simply the closest I have found to the joke claim on the SEC website, so I really don't know where they are getting that one from.

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

#135

Post by will_brown »

tommorris wrote: post #132
will_brown wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In its hubris the SEC forgot one thing, the most important thing, the only thing...yes the SEC knows the law well, but this is smart contracts, Case Law/precedent/stare decisis don’t apply to ICOs... the code is the law

Good luck arguing that novel legal theory when in front of a judge on a fraud or tax evasion trial.

It’s sarcasm, I forgot the doesn’t exist on HN. My post history shows from day one I called DAO snake oil, and code is Law bullshit, and shows how much crap I took for that here on HN. But if the SEc can have a sense of humor about it why can’t I? They really did miss an opportunity to use the smart contract marketing though...

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

#137

Post by freedomben »

Operyl wrote: post #29

I'm curious that they used Hover as a domain registrar, and Heroku to host the site. I have to wonder how much hell someone had to go through to get those two as approved vendors.

Having worked in government in the past, I wouldn't be surprised at all if Heroku and Hover aren't approved vendors. Somebody is probably just paying for it out of pocket. Not worth the bureaucratic headache to get them to pay for $20 worth of stuff.

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

#138

Post by wdewind »

mikekchar wrote: post #95
wdewind wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are some examples of ICOs that are not illegal securities offerings?

Whether or not it's an illegal security offering, I'm not entirely sure because I don't fully understand the law. However, a hypothetical example of one purported not to be illegal would be something like crowdfunding a game. You sell tokens that will be redeemed for a copy of the game when it is finished. This would allow people who change their mind half way through to freely sell their game token to someone else w…

Late reply and IANAL but I don't believe you can actually do a token model where the people buying tokens early on pay less for them than they will be priced at later. Pretty sure that doesn't pass the Howey Test[1] because there is an expectation of profit. And if there isn't an expectation of profit there is little to no incentive to have a token, kickstarter would work.

1. https://consumer.findlaw.com/securities-law/what-is-the-howe...

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