Live data from Hacker News

SEC Charges Kik With Conducting $100M Unregistered ICO

sec.gov

71–80 of 343 posts

Re: SEC Charges Kik With Conducting $100M Unregistered ICO

#72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not all ICOs are scams. In some cases people have taken the time to work out a set of incentives that allows a market that previously needed to be operated by a corporate entity to be operated without central control. Such an incentive scheme has intrinsic value equivalent to the coordinating body it replaces. An ICO for such a scheme is not necessarily a scam. Certainly the vast majority of ICOs are scams, but not a…

Name one

vectorspace.ai

Re: SEC Charges Kik With Conducting $100M Unregistered ICO

#73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not all ICOs are scams. In some cases people have taken the time to work out a set of incentives that allows a market that previously needed to be operated by a corporate entity to be operated without central control. Such an incentive scheme has intrinsic value equivalent to the coordinating body it replaces. An ICO for such a scheme is not necessarily a scam. Certainly the vast majority of ICOs are scams, but not a…

Name one

0x. BAT.

Re: SEC Charges Kik With Conducting $100M Unregistered ICO

#75
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ethereum also had an ICO (paid in Bitcoin) and it delivered. Cosmos held an ICO and delivered. Not all ICOs are scams.

>Ethereum also had an ICO (paid in Bitcoin) and it delivered. According to the SEC it was also an illegal offering of a security, and its receiving special treatment bc they considered it to have matured and no longer be considered a security, therefore grandfathered its grandfathered in unlike any other ICO. No one else is going to have the good fortune of being able to offer an unregistered security then mature int…

....which is the point of this lawsuit, the determine if an ICO is a security or not.

Re: SEC Charges Kik With Conducting $100M Unregistered ICO

#76
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of people think it, but if you're thinking it the last thing you want to do is publicize that and invite people (particularly the SEC) to ask "Why don't you want the SEC to sue you?" A number of smaller ICOs just settled with the SEC and refunded the money to investors when they got a Wells Notice. Those are all the folks who said "Oh man I don't want the SEC to sue me, I'm gonna get creamed in court." Kik is d…

Well a messenger app for 8 years, but that's not really what the lawsuit is about.

They want to add payments to their messenger app. That's a known business model and a hot area right now - WeChat pioneered it, Line does it too, and Facebook is working on a cryptocurrency-based solution that does the same thing.

Re: SEC Charges Kik With Conducting $100M Unregistered ICO

#78
post #21
post #16

So what happens to Kik now? Funding-wise, I mean. The press release says that: "the company’s management predicted internally that it would run out of money in 2017. In early 2017, the company sought to pivot to a new type of business, which it financed through the sale of one trillion digital tokens." I'm guessing that they spent a decent amount of the money they raised through the ICO. If they have to give it back,…

> If they have to give it back, will they have to take on even more funding from a VC at even worse terms? ... I think they are far more worried about being referred at this point. Who cares if you have try to pay back ICO investors? As long as you can stay out of prison, any terms are good terms. I suspect a good many people at Kik will be losing property they own, because this will definitely pierce the veil so to…

Kik is a Canadian company, and based upon most Canadian business owners I know their personal assets are most likely off-shored in one of the popular Caribbean islands used for this purpose. Tax evasion is rampant here.

Re: SEC Charges Kik With Conducting $100M Unregistered ICO

#79

Has Kik cleaned up its child porn problem? Judging by a quick search, it's still the medium of choice for monstrous people in 2019. https://www.theverge.com/2017/8/6/16104280/kik-messenger-app...

>it's still the medium of choice for monstrous people in 2019.

You posted a link from 2017

Re: SEC Charges Kik With Conducting $100M Unregistered ICO

#80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The continuous pump-and-dump activity that you see in the crypto space is a clear demonstration that they should be regulated by the SEC. Regulation is unpopular among the people inside the regulated industry, but it protects society as a whole.

It's often the other way around: regulation is popular among people inside the regulated industry (it keeps competitors out, while being treated as "just business as normal" by employees of the regulated industry), while being unpopular with potential new entrants on the outside. The only industries that really fight regulation are those where there's currently a mad scramble of new startups trying to gain position (…

Banks lobby against regulation that would protect the consumer, make pricing more transparent and generally hurt banks' bottom line.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/auction-2012-banks-lobby-wash...

Corporate lobbying has not been that strong in EU, where SEPA wire transfers are fee and merchant card fees reasonable capped. And now as the latest PSD2 directive the banks must give you an API access to your own bank account.

Post reply on HN