Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

davidgerard.co.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 105 posts

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

#91

Post by snagglegaggle »

EpicEng wrote: post #32
snagglegaggle wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that's arguable. You're completely within your rights to refuse an unlawful order from a police officer. That it usually would lead to you getting shot reflects poorly on our society, not on the judgement of the person refusing the unlawful order.

Which order is unlawful in your mind?

It is not necessary that I agree, but probably that the Telegram offering is not a security. Sure, "all they had to do was file" but that is a pretty onerous requirement if you think you're not a security, and hugely restricts your market.

The Telegram token may increase in price but there's no profit sharing directly from Telegram. It's as if you funded a kickstarter for a limited edition trading card and the company was going to soon start printing more.

Nobody is actually commenting on this argument. It just seems like there's a team of people following me around downvoting me.

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

#92

Post by spiralx »

ggreer wrote: post #65
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Do you think there are any viable financial instruments that would allow the little guy to not be bossed around by the threat of ruinous legal fees? eg: Insurance that would cover up to $100,000 in legal fees in the event that you are sued. (If everyone were required to have such insurance, it would be quite cheap.) Another option could be to allow the defendant to "double the stakes" and say, "If I lose, I will pay…

Surely class actions cover this sort of thing? And I know court costs work differently in the US and UK, but there are plenty of "no-win, no-fee" legal firms over here - affectionately known as "ambulance chasers" lol.

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

#93

Post by robcohen »

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/…

PoW is arguably ecologically irresponsible, but PoS consensus should fix that issue. Have you read the ouroboros papers?

https://eprint.iacr.org/2018/378.pdf

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

#94

Post by jki275 »

spiralx wrote: post #92
ggreer wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think there are any viable financial instruments that would allow the little guy to not be bossed around by the threat of ruinous legal fees? eg: Insurance that would cover up to $100,000 in legal fees in the event that you are sued. (If everyone were required to have such insurance, it would be quite cheap.) Another option could be to allow the defendant to "double the stakes" and say, "If I lose, I will pay…

Surely class actions cover this sort of thing? And I know court costs work differently in the US and UK, but there are plenty of "no-win, no-fee" legal firms over here - affectionately known as "ambulance chasers" lol.

class actions exist solely to enrich lawyers. They generally do little to nothing for the people who are the parties to them.

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

#95

Post by jki275 »

snagglegaggle wrote: post #89
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Absolutely.

I have a friend who went to prison for a crime someone else committed, almost solely because the defense did not have the financial resources to fight the charges effectively.

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

#96

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

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

#97

Post by 7786655 »

noxer wrote: post #79
spurdoman77 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Usually when I visit web shops accepting cryptos as a payment all top coins accepted are pow coins.

Crypto payment in a web shop isn't even a real use case. What they do is send crypto to a third party which sells it for fiat and then the good is paid with fiat. Does that need crypto? No that would work with anything else. The Code on a Paypal PSC for example isn't a crypto coin/token but it can do the exact same thing just better in most cases. The reason you can buy stuff with crypto in web shops is because peopl…

The difference is that if a web store accepts crypo they don't need to worry about the payment processor oligopoly cancelling them.

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

#98

Post by aakilfernandes »

davidgerard wrote: post #66
aakilfernandes wrote: post #36

The author of this article is turning inches into miles. SAFTs aren't dead. The SEC is alleging Telegram has failed to deliver the promises it has made, so the SEC is pre-emptively stating they need to halt delivery. Presumably, once they complete their promises they'll be able to deliver Grams. From the SEC Complaint: The Whitepaper spoke of potential future products and services that investors could use in connecti…

(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…

> they don't care and will look at how your token actually works and whether this is an investment contract under the Howey test.

This is 100% correct, but you're making the wrong conclusion. You're concluding the SEC considers the legal framework bogus, when the SEC is arguing they have not met the legal framework.

In a SAFT you sell securities for future non-securities. What Telegram did was sell securities for future securities. There's a couple of facts they use in this assertion:

1. Telegram said they would leverage their existing user base to promote the token (i.e. the success of Grams is based on Telegram's efforts as a promoter) 2. TON is PoS, and that its not possible to deliver a PoS network when the original stakers are all qualified investors

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

#99

Post by ggreer »

spiralx wrote: post #92
ggreer wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think there are any viable financial instruments that would allow the little guy to not be bossed around by the threat of ruinous legal fees? eg: Insurance that would cover up to $100,000 in legal fees in the event that you are sued. (If everyone were required to have such insurance, it would be quite cheap.) Another option could be to allow the defendant to "double the stakes" and say, "If I lose, I will pay…

Surely class actions cover this sort of thing? And I know court costs work differently in the US and UK, but there are plenty of "no-win, no-fee" legal firms over here - affectionately known as "ambulance chasers" lol.

You seem to have completely misunderstood me. I'm talking about situations where a poor or middle class person is being sued by a rich person or large company. How does a class action cover that? And ambulance chasers sue big companies on behalf of poor people, not defend poor people from lawsuits. Both of your examples are the opposite of what I'm talking about.

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

#100

Post by sanbor »

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/…

The web could also be associated with all those subjects, but despite that there is value in the world wide web. Regarding the environmental impact of Bitcoin, pre-mined coins like Telegram ICO solves that problem.
Post reply on HN