Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Who even bought this stuff? North Korea probably.
Actually: > 167. [...] Kik declined to sell Kin to investors from certain countries, including Canada, China, Cuba, and North Korea.
Why Canada?
SEC Charges Kik With Conducting $100M Unregistered ICO
191–200 of 343 posts
Re: SEC Charges Kik With Conducting $100M Unregistered ICO
#192For those who want to guide to reading the lawsuit check out this annotated version by Katherine Wu[1]: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5ac136ed12b13f7c187bd...
[1] https://www.katherinewu.me/writings/2019/6/4/annotated-guide...
Re: SEC Charges Kik With Conducting $100M Unregistered ICO
#193cypto is a scam. EVRERY CRYPTO ICO was a security.
AND MORE IMPORTANTLY, ALL CRYPTO IS A FUTURES CONTRACT FOR PURCHASE OF A LICENSE FOR FUTURE ACCESS TO A DIGITAL SYSTEM. this includes NFC TOKENS WHERE THE CRYPTO IS A LICENSE TO OWN THE TOKEN AND EXERCISED UPON OWNERSHIP.
the bottom line is that if you have a market for things that are being traded , and they are not consumed at the point of trade/exchange ( one of the objects doens't disappear) , then the objects , the digital objects can be stored for ever and are being traded for consumption potentially at some future date, or retrading again in the future.
they are ALL FUTURES PRODUCTS to the extent they are potentially consumable.
thus-----the entire last few years is a scam. the cftc shoudl have come in an put an end to everything then. they didn't...for a reason, to encourage financializaiton and bubble blowing. which might not be such a bad thing temporarily, but right now it's clearly a scam to lure in the dubmest money just like securitization was. so qui bono? and qui loso?
Re: SEC Charges Kik With Conducting $100M Unregistered ICO
#194Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
But they have that money today. They can spend it on lawyers. If they win, they still have it, if they lose, well now they go bankrupt just $55m more in the hole than before. It’s not like anything will happen to the executives.
> But they have that money today. They can spend it on lawyers.
Lawyers know that they cannot be paid with that money. If they lose it will be forfeited. Similarly you can't rob a bank and use the money to pay your lawyer.
> It’s not like anything will happen to the executives.
That's absolutely not true. It's not unreasonable to expect that the SEC might refer people to the DOJ for criminal prosecution and jail time would send a nice signal.
Re: SEC Charges Kik With Conducting $100M Unregistered ICO
#195Earlier quoted context omitted.
It already came out upon initial investigation and most likely subpoenas: >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. Kik sold its “Kin” tokens to the public, and at a discounted price to wealthy purchasers, raising more than $55 million fr…
Wow, when you see it laid out like that, crypto looks terrifying. Note, I mean as an investment independent of technological prospects.
Curious why? Investment in new & emerging technologies or markets is always high-risk: I've had years when my Emerging Markets index fund lost half its value, and I know friends that basically lost everything in the dot-com bubble. Hell, the S&P 500 lost 40% of its value in 2008.
I would hope that nobody is putting money into crypto that they need to live on. But for money that you aren't going to need for years, there's a good chance that some form of cryptocurrency will end up replacing much of the current financial system, and it makes sense to diversify bets across them.
Re: SEC Charges Kik With Conducting $100M Unregistered ICO
#196Earlier quoted context omitted.
It would open up ways to get money into and out of your chat app with less friction.
Also saves you from the "How do I know you won't run off with the money?" and "What happens if Kik goes out of business?" questions. The value of a blockchain is that your digital tokens exist independently of the sponsoring organization, so the sponsoring organization cannot just alter or shutdown their database to make your funds go poof. Granted, if Kik went bust tomorrow those tokens would most likely have no val…
That's only true in the case where the underlying cyptocurrency is actually accepted outside the platform. In theory, if your app is transacting money, it keeps the equivalent cash in an insured bank account which is exactly how PayPal and similar work. If it's not widely accepted, it's basically the same as in-game tokens/currency. Speaking of in-game tokens, people have used them for the same purpose of cryptocurrency e.g. capital flight and money laundering.
Re: SEC Charges Kik With Conducting $100M Unregistered ICO
#197This was inevitable. As I said two years ago[1], just listen to Kik's own words: "When we looked at raising another round [of VC funding], we asked ourselves how do we answer the question about how we will become a profitable business [...] We didn’t have an answer we really believed." ... so instead they decided to raise money from unsophisticated investors in an unregulated market, where nobody asks such inconvenie…
The regulations indeed exist because fraud in this vein was prevalent and it made it difficult to compete if you weren't defrauding investors.
Re: SEC Charges Kik With Conducting $100M Unregistered ICO
#198Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 (…
Nurses aren't regulated by HIPAA, hospitals and medical device companies are and they fight HIPAA all the time. Bankers don't deal with margin requirements...you're thinking of investors. Contractors don't fight building codes because they just work for others, but developers (that hire the contractors) do, as do realtors. Brokers do fight broker licensing all the time, because it restricts what they can profitably s…
This isn't really the point, but nurses are regulated by HIPAA. Everyone who touches patient data is personally liable for the safety of that data and may face civil and/or criminal penalties if a breach occurs.
Re: SEC Charges Kik With Conducting $100M Unregistered ICO
#199Re: SEC Charges Kik With Conducting $100M Unregistered ICO
#200Earlier quoted context omitted.
>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 rememb…
Well Cooley’s free SAFT legal framework ended up with startups facing SEC enforcement actions.
>I guess you get what you pay for.
Then again, Kik, Cooley’s paying client also ended up in an SEC enforcement action (they claim they already spent $5M in legal fee prior to the SEC bringing the case).
I’m not so sure the issue is how much the clients paid for Cooley’s advice so much as the advice itself.