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SEC blocks the Telegram ICO – what this means, and what happens now

davidgerard.co.uk

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Re: SEC blocks the Telegram ICO – what this means, and what happens now

#81

Post by davidgerard »

rjknight wrote: post #78
davidgerard wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(author here) nah, pretty sure SAFTs are dead. The whole point of the SAFT rigmarole was to sell tokens as securities but not have them be securities on delivery, pretty much as Telegram was planning to do here - the point was not to be considered securities by the SEC. This complaint demonstrates what the SEC think of the idea, i.e. they don't care and will look at how your token actually works and whether this is a…

I think the argument could be a bit clearer here. A SAFT allows a party to offer the delivery of tokens at some point in the future. This offering is a securities offering under US law, and therefore has to comply with the relevant regulations. In practical terms, that means filing some forms with the SEC, ranging from fairly lightweight forms if you're offering the SAFT privately without marketing, to increasingly h…

What I mean by "SAFT is dead" is that the purpose they were overwhelmingly used for - which really was to try to sell token futures as a security, but have the resulting tokens not be a security - is a non-starter.

Sure you can try to construct exceptions to this - but dodging the Howey test was what SAFTs were invented for, and I feel reasonably confident in stating that this complaint against Telegram makes it very clear that this just isn't going to fly.

Re: SEC blocks the Telegram ICO – what this means, and what happens now

#82

Post by m-i-l »

schmichael wrote: post #58
austhrow743 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't all that the stuff that makes crypto exciting? Its the wild west come again. A new frontier. Appeals to the desire to expose oneself to risks for profit. To do something that maybe you shouldn't. To operate outside of the soft, protected existence of mainstream first world society. Bowl without the bumper bars. Absent that emotional fulfilment its just boring old money.

I know "wild west" is a popular analogy, but I fear people may forget it was awful. Native peoples were slaughtered and forced off their land. Natural resources were mined and hunted with no regard for long-term sustainability. There was slave labor, sex trafficking, and endless profiteering based on speculation or downright lies. The rich got richer and maybe some poor people got a leg up? A whole lot of people ende…

"I know "wild west" is a popular analogy, but I fear people may forget it was awful."

Fair points about the American Wild West and lawlessness, genocide, etc. But I think a better analogy would be the medieval era. The economic similarities between cryptocurrencies and feudalism have been fairly well discussed already, e.g. the privatisation of money creation, proliferation of decentralised currency fiefdoms, the crypto-VCs and crypto-oligarchs the new feudal lords and the "hodlers" the new vassals, etc. But the potential social impact hasn't really been discussed much. If the crypto-lords, supported by their crypto-serfs, do succeed in breaking down the social contract, we do risk returning to an era when life was "nasty, brutish and short". Life in the medieval era, before the Age of Enlightenment, when magic and superstition ruled everyday life, when there was the ever-present threat of plague, pestilence and famine, makes the Wild West sound not so bad after all, and is not something I would have thought many would consider aspirational.

Re: SEC blocks the Telegram ICO – what this means, and what happens now

#83

Post by paveldurov »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #3

> Telegram refused to accept a subpoena Within the sea of stupid that was this endeavour—single-issuer token pretending not to be a security, the wholesale scam that are SAFTs—this really takes the cake.

If you'd like to join our legal team you can reply with your résumé!

Re: SEC blocks the Telegram ICO – what this means, and what happens now

#84

Post by babaeth »

schmichael wrote: post #25

With each new cryptocurrency drama due to flouting AML/KYC regulations, flouting securities regulations, collapsing/exit-scamming exchanges, murders, drugs, sex trafficking, let's not forget: PoW is an ecologically irresponsible algorithm.[1] Altogether cryptocurrency is such a terrifyingly irresponsible ecosystem, I'm surprised anyone wants to be involved in it. [1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/…

> Altogether cryptocurrency is such a terrifyingly irresponsible ecosystem, I'm surprised anyone wants to be involved in it.

Here are some reasons why people might be interested in the cryptocurrencies ecosystem:

- Paying 3% per credit card transactions isn't efficient

- Decentralized Finance matters. The DeFi movement is actually really interesting. You should look into decentralized lending protocols with stablecoins.

- Decentralized Governance is exciting and can facilitate new experiments like Quadratic voting

Re: SEC blocks the Telegram ICO – what this means, and what happens now

#85

Post by [deleted] »

schmichael wrote: post #58
austhrow743 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't all that the stuff that makes crypto exciting? Its the wild west come again. A new frontier. Appeals to the desire to expose oneself to risks for profit. To do something that maybe you shouldn't. To operate outside of the soft, protected existence of mainstream first world society. Bowl without the bumper bars. Absent that emotional fulfilment its just boring old money.

I know "wild west" is a popular analogy, but I fear people may forget it was awful. Native peoples were slaughtered and forced off their land. Natural resources were mined and hunted with no regard for long-term sustainability. There was slave labor, sex trafficking, and endless profiteering based on speculation or downright lies. The rich got richer and maybe some poor people got a leg up? A whole lot of people ende…

[deleted]

Re: SEC blocks the Telegram ICO – what this means, and what happens now

#86

Post by pointerpointer »

schmichael wrote: post #25

With each new cryptocurrency drama due to flouting AML/KYC regulations, flouting securities regulations, collapsing/exit-scamming exchanges, murders, drugs, sex trafficking, let's not forget: PoW is an ecologically irresponsible algorithm.[1] Altogether cryptocurrency is such a terrifyingly irresponsible ecosystem, I'm surprised anyone wants to be involved in it. [1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/…

> Altogether cryptocurrency is such a terrifyingly irresponsible ecosystem

You mean compared to Wall Street, Banks and their virtual money system?

Re: SEC blocks the Telegram ICO – what this means, and what happens now

#87

Post by jorvi »

shakna wrote: post #52
jorvi wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that is not how it generally works. If Unilever gets told by a UK court they can't sell peanut butter because that court doesn't like peanut butter, it doesn't mean Unilever is suddenly forbidden from selling peanut butter in the USA. Edit: to clear up the analogy - UK courts don't have a say over what Unilever can and can't sell in USA jurisdiction. Likewise, the SEC can (should?) only regulate trade within USA…

> Edit: to clear up the analogy - UK courts don't have a say over what Unilever can and can't sell in USA jurisdiction. And the SEC is dealing with what is being sold in the US. > committed to flood the U.S. capital markets with billions of Grams by October 31, 2019 > sold more than 1 billion Grams to 39 U.S. Purchasers, raising $424.5 million from the U.S. market

And the article says

> This is worldwide — not just for the US

I even quoted that in my parent comment.

Re: SEC blocks the Telegram ICO – what this means, and what happens now

#88

Post by knopkop_ »

DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #57
schmichael wrote: post #25

With each new cryptocurrency drama due to flouting AML/KYC regulations, flouting securities regulations, collapsing/exit-scamming exchanges, murders, drugs, sex trafficking, let's not forget: PoW is an ecologically irresponsible algorithm.[1] Altogether cryptocurrency is such a terrifyingly irresponsible ecosystem, I'm surprised anyone wants to be involved in it. [1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/…

Besides proof-of-work and proof-of-stake, I’m surprised the more ecologically-friendly proof-of-space system isn’t being looked at harder. FileCoin uses it (it’s integral to the system to prove you have the space you’re selling) but it could also be used by other distributed Blockchains to prove that a node’s operator has invested in the ecosystem (by buying lots of storage) - I’d say I’d prefer to run out of HDD sup…

Burstcoin uses proof-of-space. IIRC it was launched in 2014.

Re: SEC blocks the Telegram ICO – what this means, and what happens now

#89

Post by snagglegaggle »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #62
snagglegaggle wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ehh, no; and frankly, it's like you've not even read my comments at all. If you have please speak to some specific argument they bring up. Otherwise, repeating the opposing argument serves no point. It's almost always about money. On the defensive side, there are enough ways to stall that you can almost always outspend someone to win. On the offensive side, you can spend more time investigating and almost assuredly t…

> It's almost always about money As someone who as gone through a fair deal of litigation and arbitration, this is wrong (or at the very least, inapplicable). It’s a common armchair lawyer’s myth. If your opponent has more than $100,000 the tables are fairly even; more than $1 million, totally even. There is a ceiling to court costs, and a finite amount of time before judges issue rulings. (Spending to try and get an…

It seems you interacted with reasonable people who wanted to uphold the rule of law. Not all lawyers, prosecutors, judges, or police officers are like that. The best suggestion I can make is to look up the correlation between time spent preparing in a criminal case and conviction rate. I do not have research db access anymore and can't do this for you.

It should be obvious that time/money spent and outcome correlate by looking at the reverse. Spending no time would assuredly prepare an inadequate case. What is unusual is the almost unbounded positive direction correlation.

You need to divorce "following the law" and "following the law that was intended or that may result in the most freedom for the most people." Many high level cases are the former, not the latter.

Re: SEC blocks the Telegram ICO – what this means, and what happens now

#90

Post by loceng »

austhrow743 wrote: post #53
schmichael wrote: post #25

With each new cryptocurrency drama due to flouting AML/KYC regulations, flouting securities regulations, collapsing/exit-scamming exchanges, murders, drugs, sex trafficking, let's not forget: PoW is an ecologically irresponsible algorithm.[1] Altogether cryptocurrency is such a terrifyingly irresponsible ecosystem, I'm surprised anyone wants to be involved in it. [1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/…

Isn't all that the stuff that makes crypto exciting? Its the wild west come again. A new frontier. Appeals to the desire to expose oneself to risks for profit. To do something that maybe you shouldn't. To operate outside of the soft, protected existence of mainstream first world society. Bowl without the bumper bars. Absent that emotional fulfilment its just boring old money.

Hype as the solution to boredom is a symptom of intelligent, capable people, not being tasked with valuable work they feel passionate about. I'd argue this is heavily due to built-in friction into our systems of indoctrination, educational pathways and a lack of basic foundation of capital to survive from - e.g. to develop your ideas, your skills - perhaps coding and designing, story telling to better, more eloquently express yourself and your ideas - all necessary skills to become a leader, to manage an organization - to organize.
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