Earlier quoted context omitted.
Name one
0x. BAT.
No reason for BAT to be a token, in fact I'm quite confident it accomplishes nothing but making the user experience worse.
SEC Charges Kik With Conducting $100M Unregistered ICO
101–110 of 343 posts
Re: SEC Charges Kik With Conducting $100M Unregistered ICO
#102Earlier quoted context omitted.
Name one
Augur
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augur_(software)
too few users to even be considered, in my opinion
Re: SEC Charges Kik With Conducting $100M Unregistered ICO
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
Patrick Gibbs: > First of all, you have to consider the SEC’s normal process for that sort of thing. It is very difficult and it takes a very, very, very long time for the SEC to give that kind of forward-looking advice, usually in the form of a no action letter. I mean, here we are in 2019 and they have only just recently released what I think is the very first no action letter relating to a cryptocurrency and that…
>Patrick Gibbs: First your citing the Cooley attorney who advised the company...of course he is going to justify his own legal advice. It’s not going to look good when the court determines Kik knew if could have sought clarification from the SEC but didnt Because the SEC no Action Letter process wasn’t practical. Let’s also keep in mind Cooley is the Firm that developed the SAFT (security agreement for future tokens)…
Hey... I'm not citing. I'm not even arguing. I'm quoting their answer to your question.
Supposedly Kik did seek clarification from the SEC and didn't get any. Then they received an enforcement action which is supposed to include details about the problems involved and the actions to be taken, but it contained none of those. Since then, they have been working for a year to get any kind of detail from the SEC, and the SEC has declined.
Personally, I think the root problem is that it seems the SEC is wildly under-funded and over-loaded. If a politician ran on a platform of election & campaign-finance reform + fund up the IRS & SEC; you couldn't call me a single-issue voter, but maybe a "2-issue voter" in that dream scenario.
Re: SEC Charges Kik With Conducting $100M Unregistered ICO
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
Doesn't everyone publicly look forward to proving their case in court when the inevitable legal battle is obvious? Not many folks say "Oh man I don't want the SEC to sue me, I'm gonna get creamed in court!"
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…
> Kik is different in that they have deep pockets, strong legal counsel, and a product that's been out there for 8 years.
Except they don't. The only money they have is from an unregistered sale of securities which was only undertaken because they HAD NO MONEY. Their product costs more to run than it makes, and is irrelevant to the SEC lawsuit.
Re: SEC Charges Kik With Conducting $100M Unregistered ICO
#105Kik is Canadian technically no?
From the last line of the article, Canadian regulators appear to be helping the SEC here:
> The SEC appreciates the assistance of the Ontario Securities Commission.
Re: SEC Charges Kik With Conducting $100M Unregistered ICO
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
0x. BAT.
No reason for BAT to be a token, in fact I'm quite confident it accomplishes nothing but making the user experience worse.
There is, though - you need its value to float on the open market so that if ads are underpriced (relative to their annoyance to the user), more users opt out, the supply of BAT on the market declines, advertisers have to pay a higher price, more users opt in, and equilibrium is restored. That's the whole point of having BAT in the first place: correctly price attention via market means.
Similarly, you can't use a regular currency (like just paying users in dollars, AllAdvantage style) because the value of a dollar is more dependent upon other markets like housing or food than on advertising. If attention is mispriced with that system, the only party who can correct that is Brave, and Brave doesn't has neither the information nor the incentive to set a correct market-clearing price.
Re: SEC Charges Kik With Conducting $100M Unregistered ICO
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're giving away a security that is still considered a security. That doesn't mean it won't be regulated as a security.
First clause of the Howey Test is that there's an investment of money. Perhaps at some point the SEC lawyers will argue to a court that something can still be a security without an investment of money, but I don't think there's any particular reason to think a court will agree.
You're conflating the definition of a "security" under the Securities Act with the definition of an "investment contract" (undefined in the Securities Act and defined by the court in Howey).
An "investment contract" is just one of many things that fall within the definition of "security":
> The term “security” means any note, stock, treasury stock, security future, security-based swap, bond, debenture, evidence of indebtedness, certificate of interest or participation in any profit-sharing agreement, collateral-trust certificate, preorganization certificate or subscription, transferable share, investment contract, voting-trust certificate, certificate of deposit for a security, fractional undivided interest in oil, gas, or other mineral rights, any put, call, straddle, option, or privilege on any security, certificate of deposit, or group or index of securities (including any interest therein or based on the value thereof), or any put, call, straddle, option, or privilege entered into on a national securities exchange relating to foreign currency, or, in general, any interest or instrument commonly known as a “security”, or any certificate of interest or participation in, temporary or interim certificate for, receipt for, guarantee of, or warrant or right to subscribe to or purchase, any of the foregoing.
Re: SEC Charges Kik With Conducting $100M Unregistered ICO
#108Earlier 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
Filecoin?
Re: SEC Charges Kik With Conducting $100M Unregistered ICO
#109Re: SEC Charges Kik With Conducting $100M Unregistered ICO
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
Patrick Gibbs: > First of all, you have to consider the SEC’s normal process for that sort of thing. It is very difficult and it takes a very, very, very long time for the SEC to give that kind of forward-looking advice, usually in the form of a no action letter. I mean, here we are in 2019 and they have only just recently released what I think is the very first no action letter relating to a cryptocurrency and that…
>Patrick Gibbs: First your citing the Cooley attorney who advised the company...of course he is going to justify his own legal advice. It’s not going to look good when the court determines Kik knew if could have sought clarification from the SEC but didnt Because the SEC no Action Letter process wasn’t practical. Let’s also keep in mind Cooley is the Firm that developed the SAFT (security agreement for future tokens)…
>Let’s also keep in mind Cooley is the Firm that developed the SAFT (security agreement for future tokens) released their SAFT whitepaper into the wild telling startups to use their SAFT legal framework to raise money with ICOs legally and these are some of the first companies the SEC targeted for enforcement actions.
They threw out some free legal advice and people used it?
I guess you get what you pay for.
I remember the story of the startup executive who thought he maybe got odd advice from his CFO about stock options but was assured that "this is how it is done". He went and asked a local attorney effectively "I don't see how this could be legal."
So they didn't do it, little while later his CFO had to resign, because they were going to jail for doing the same stock option (basically massive back dating) plan at another company.
Bullet dodged!