Live data from Hacker News

Bitcoin is the only coin the SEC Chair will call a commodity

axios.com

51–60 of 203 posts

Re: Bitcoin is the only coin the SEC Chair will call a commodity

#52
From the original Ethereum pre-sale blog post: https://blog.ethereum.org/2014/07/22/launching-the-ether-sal...

> Ether is a product, NOT a security or investment offering. Ether is simply a token useful for paying transaction fees or building or purchasing decentralized application services on the Ethereum platform; it does not give you voting rights over anything, and we make no guarantees of its future value.

Re: Bitcoin is the only coin the SEC Chair will call a commodity

#53

From the original Ethereum pre-sale blog post: https://blog.ethereum.org/2014/07/22/launching-the-ether-sal... > Ether is a product, NOT a security or investment offering. Ether is simply a token useful for paying transaction fees or building or purchasing decentralized application services on the Ethereum platform; it does not give you voting rights over anything, and we make no guarantees of its future value.

Just because they claim something doesn't make it true.

Re: Bitcoin is the only coin the SEC Chair will call a commodity

#54
post #10

This is huge. Essentially if they find anyone sold crypto to unaccredited investors they would be engaging in illegal sales of a security. This may lead to lawsuits where crypto sellers find they are on the hook for the losses of people they illegally sold to. It may also lead to jail time for a substantial portion of the crypto community.

>It may also lead to jail time for a substantial portion of the crypto community. I'm cracking up over here. Are you actually being serious?

No post body was provided.

Re: Bitcoin is the only coin the SEC Chair will call a commodity

#55

Bitcoin has less foundation- or team-based leadership that have plagued other crypto projects. This leadership (eg Ethereum foundation) gives crypto projects the air of legitimacy, but also the impression, as Hinman put it, that some managerial work and direction is expected, tipping the scale towards security. If the network becomes decentralized to the point where no one party has sway over its direction (even a go…

The idea that Bitcoin has no leaders is a big lie that these regulators should be able to see through. You can take look at any of the well-known whales to see obvious evidence against that claim. They make the claim because it allows them to maintain plausible deniability while manipulating the market as much as they possibly can. I wouldn't trust anyone in finance who says they're not doing managerial work and dire…

If there are "leaders" in Bitcoin, it would not be the whales. It is not Proof of Stake where money buys you a voting right.

Re: Bitcoin is the only coin the SEC Chair will call a commodity

#56
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The odds of this happening are effectively 0, federal government is working on a regulatory framework for crypto markets and it definitely doesn’t involve jailing anyone for sales that have previously been considered legal by basically everyone

It would probably run afoul of the Constitutional protection against "ex post facto" laws.[0] If something (in this case, selling Bitcoin) was legal when you did it, but is now a crime, it is unconstitutional to prosecute you for it. [0]: Article I, Section 9 https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Constitution_of_the_United_St... >

Is this ex-post facto? Its not like the law is new or that its suddenly illegal, people just weren't sure before if it was violating the law, which is really different from creating a new law.

Re: Bitcoin is the only coin the SEC Chair will call a commodity

#57

Bitcoin has less foundation- or team-based leadership that have plagued other crypto projects. This leadership (eg Ethereum foundation) gives crypto projects the air of legitimacy, but also the impression, as Hinman put it, that some managerial work and direction is expected, tipping the scale towards security. If the network becomes decentralized to the point where no one party has sway over its direction (even a go…

while it may be smart from a securities/legal/tax persepctive it also dooms bitcoin to be a useless coin. Transaction speeds abysmal and the energy usage is absurd. These could never be changed

Lightning Network is a layer 2 network on top of Bitcoin that is governed by smart contracts at the base layer and has transaction speed of seconds. It's increasingly used in place of base layer transactions for small to medium sized amounts (e.g. US$1 - $1000). Anything on the order of US$10k+ can reasonably transacted on the base layer, and when I am spending that much I don't mind a 10 minute confirmation time.

Re: Bitcoin is the only coin the SEC Chair will call a commodity

#58

From the original Ethereum pre-sale blog post: https://blog.ethereum.org/2014/07/22/launching-the-ether-sal... > Ether is a product, NOT a security or investment offering. Ether is simply a token useful for paying transaction fees or building or purchasing decentralized application services on the Ethereum platform; it does not give you voting rights over anything, and we make no guarantees of its future value.

A claim like this was also the reason behind Howey Test being a thing.

Re: Bitcoin is the only coin the SEC Chair will call a commodity

#59

Bitcoin has less foundation- or team-based leadership that have plagued other crypto projects. This leadership (eg Ethereum foundation) gives crypto projects the air of legitimacy, but also the impression, as Hinman put it, that some managerial work and direction is expected, tipping the scale towards security. If the network becomes decentralized to the point where no one party has sway over its direction (even a go…

Bitcoin has a single popular client. There are people who work on that client.

Ethereum has five execution clients, developed by independent teams, and another five proof-of-stake clients, also developed by independent teams, plus an open community of researchers where anyone can participate. The Ethereum Foundation funds some of this, but not all of it.

If the various teams don't agree to do something, it won't get done. You can verify for yourself that no one party is in charge, simply by listening to the public dev calls.

Re: Bitcoin is the only coin the SEC Chair will call a commodity

#60
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea that Bitcoin has no leaders is a big lie that these regulators should be able to see through. You can take look at any of the well-known whales to see obvious evidence against that claim. They make the claim because it allows them to maintain plausible deniability while manipulating the market as much as they possibly can. I wouldn't trust anyone in finance who says they're not doing managerial work and dire…

If there are "leaders" in Bitcoin, it would not be the whales. It is not Proof of Stake where money buys you a voting right.

Money buys you voting rights in some proof-of-stake implementations that give governance rights to stakers. Ethereum's doesn't do that. Its stakers have no more governance rights than miners.
Post reply on HN