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SEC Charges Kik With Conducting $100M Unregistered ICO

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

#281

Post by saalweachter »

jjeaff wrote: post #238
tasssko wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using other peoples money to pay for lawyers to defend against taking peoples money illegally. Yes I fully expected this to happen.

No idea how often they go after it, but if you pay your attorney with ill-gotten gains, those funds can be confiscated from the attorneys for restitution to the victims.

I imagine if you look into the case law long enough, you'll find a case where someone tried to shield their assets by "paying" it all to their lawyer, with the understanding the lawyer would later find a way to give a reasonable fraction of it back.

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

#282

Post by Animats »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #187
Animats wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But not an established profitable company. This is a money-losing startup looking for another funding round.

Vast majority of people don't understand how Internet startups are run. Even here on HN, people need frequent reminders. Myself, for a long time I believed tech startups are micro-R&D for new technologies. Couple years of HN and in the local startup community later, I finally realized that a lot of Internet startups tend to turn investor money into business model R&D - i.e. ever more innovative ways to break an exist…

Myself, for a long time I believed tech startups are micro-R&D for new technologies.

They were from about 1970 to 1998. Then came the dot-com boom.

During that period, most VC firms made money. Now, VC funds as a a class are a net lose.

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

#283

Post by aey »

arcticbull wrote: post #262
CryptoPunk wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have any evidence for that? There are other ways of addressing fraud besides violating people's right to freely contract with other consenting adults, like punishing those who commit fraud to deter others from committing the crime, and public education campaigns. The idea that the government has a right to deem a certain class of investors as "unsophisticated", and thus better off deprived of the right to deci…

You’ve got this backwards. Anyone can sell securities to any investor if the company they’re selling shares in can commit to providing regular audited financial disclosures showing they’re not frauds. It’s on the product being brought to market to show it’s fit for sale, not for the investor to show they’re “sophisticated.” If they show they’re sophisticated they can elect to waive the reporting requirements. You cou…

Except the reporting requirement are cost prohibitive for a company that is seeking seed funding to file an s-1 or a reg—a even.

So us, poor unsophisticated plebs, can’t invest in anything until post IPO. Which seems to be way after the majority of the gains have been captured.

Ironically people are trying to build fully automatic DAOs, such that the use of funds is fully transparent. Effectively baking in the reporting into the organization.

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

#285

Post by aey »

mountainofdeath wrote: post #185
mikeleung wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are looking to be the test case to set a precedent in order to force clarity around securities laws that are outdated and unclear when being applied to cryptocurrencies

If it looks like a security, and smells like a security and behaves like a security...it is a security regardless of the the mechanism.

Is writing software protected by freedom of speech?

Is encoding a set of account values into a genesis block posted on GitHub a security offering?

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

#286

Post by wavefunction »

lkrubner wrote: post #271
CryptoPunk wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have any evidence for that? There are other ways of addressing fraud besides violating people's right to freely contract with other consenting adults, like punishing those who commit fraud to deter others from committing the crime, and public education campaigns. The idea that the government has a right to deem a certain class of investors as "unsophisticated", and thus better off deprived of the right to deci…

About this: “The poorest households in the US spend 9% of their income on lottery tickets, showing that you can't legislate people out of misusing their funds.” You’ve explained why it’s urgent that we outlaw lottery tickets. For most of USA history Protestant and Catholic leaders were unified in their opposition to all forms of gambling, and so lottery tickets were unthinkable for most of USA history. And every prog…

People derive enjoyment from lotteries and scratch tickets. I agree that some people exhibit problematic behavior by spending some of their limited funds on these items but that is their right. I'd rather these entertainment sources be captured by the state for the good of all its people than administered privately or clandestinely.

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

#287

Post by dangero »

DennisP wrote: post #82
village-idiot wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ethereum as infrastructure is also a dicey proposition. It works, slowly, but it doesn’t seem like there’s a lot of demand for “dapps” outside ICO tokens, gambling, and the odd Ponzi scheme. The smart contract revolution at this point is complete vapor ware.

Other popular smart contracts right now: an ETH-backed token that uses a derivative to maintain a fairly stable value, the Uniswap decentralized exchange, and games with non-fungible tokens for player assets.

“popular”

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

#288

Post by dangero »

RexetBlell wrote: post #92
village-idiot wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ethereum as infrastructure is also a dicey proposition. It works, slowly, but it doesn’t seem like there’s a lot of demand for “dapps” outside ICO tokens, gambling, and the odd Ponzi scheme. The smart contract revolution at this point is complete vapor ware.

Ethereum is currently being used for decentralized finance. It's not vaporware at all: https://defipulse.com/

This market is not validated by anything close to mainstream.

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

#289

Post by dangero »

jfk13 wrote: post #34
pxndxx wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, Ethereum is an outlier in the sense its ICO wasn't a complete scam.

So it was a non-scam ICO in support of a platform for facilitating scam ICOs? Great.

You could make similar arguments about US Dollars

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

#290

Post by dangero »

penagwin wrote: post #113
vorpalhex wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> scam ICO It seems like you might of repeated yourself... This is the cryptocurrency roosters coming home to roost, no?

ICO is a fancy word for "Kick Starter" or crowdfunding. That's why all the crypto people are disagreeing with you. Are most ICO's scams? Yeah sadly. Are there lots of scams on Kickstarter/indiegogo/etc? Yes sadly. But an ICO itself isn't necessarily a scam (although I concede 99% of them are)

Kickstarter creates no expectation of profit by purchasers.
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