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

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

#111

Post by seoaeu »

vmoore wrote: post #44

Finance newbie here, but what is a 'security'? I looked it up, but can't grok it despite people's best attempt to describe it. All the articles can't sum it up in an ELI5 way. What's the TL;DR way of describing a security, and how does BTC fare in this? Is BTC a security?

The other replies give the technical definitions, but the high level picture is that a security is an investment opportunity. The issuer of a security has to follow a bunch of laws to ensure that said issuers don’t go around scamming everyday people

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

#112

Post by etherael »

eric_cc wrote: post #106
hnthrow1010 wrote: post #35

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…

Can you give a good example of how one of bitcoin’s “managers” changed bitcoin recently?

About five years ago they permanently restricted transaction volume to about 4 per second. After that I stopped paying attention because you couldn't ask for a clearer demonstration of their complete control than the fundamental destruction of the entire purpose of the project even existing.

So there's that.

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

#113

Post by [deleted] »

etherael wrote: post #105
gesman wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Manipulating the price is not the same as controlling the project direction.

Project direction controlled entirely by core devs and the centralised exchanges that bless their output as "bitcoin" regardless of the fact it directly contradicts the original consensus mechanism for the project and the changes implemented by said devs fundamentally broke the utility of the project. SEC and similar are likely granting BTC "commodity" status purely because it is so utterly controlled and unthreateni…

[deleted]

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

#115

Post by jazzyjackson »

etherael wrote: post #112
eric_cc wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you give a good example of how one of bitcoin’s “managers” changed bitcoin recently?

About five years ago they permanently restricted transaction volume to about 4 per second. After that I stopped paying attention because you couldn't ask for a clearer demonstration of their complete control than the fundamental destruction of the entire purpose of the project even existing. So there's that.

so you lost the blocksize war, that doesn't mean "they" have control over the whole project

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

#116

Post by anonporridge »

DennisP wrote: post #60
tboyd47 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Except Ethereum is planning to eliminate miners and move to proof of stake.

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

#117

Post by Vespasian »

mixedCase wrote: post #70
AtlasBarfed wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Ethereum can be changed from Proof of Work to Proof of Stake on a "whim", how is it not centralized in some capacity?

On a "whim" in so far as miners agree on the change.

Miners have no say in it.

They "only" participate in the on chain consensus while the switch to PoS is governed by the underlying social consensus of what code to run.

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

#118

Post by anonporridge »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #108
konschubert wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Pow, Money buys you mining capacity which is voting rights.

But you have to trade it away to buy the machines. That's very different from giving power to the people holding lots of coins.

Especially because mining is a business that you can fail at if you don't balance costs and income properly.

That's much preferable to proof of stake where early investors can just squat on their coins indefinitely with almost zero cost to maintain their authority percentage forever.

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

#119

Post by potatototoo99 »

etherael wrote: post #112
eric_cc wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you give a good example of how one of bitcoin’s “managers” changed bitcoin recently?

About five years ago they permanently restricted transaction volume to about 4 per second. After that I stopped paying attention because you couldn't ask for a clearer demonstration of their complete control than the fundamental destruction of the entire purpose of the project even existing. So there's that.

You can always fork bitcoin and throw whatever hashing power you want at it. PoW gives you that.

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

#120

Post by lottin »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #108
konschubert wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Pow, Money buys you mining capacity which is voting rights.

But you have to trade it away to buy the machines. That's very different from giving power to the people holding lots of coins.

In PoW miners buy physical capital and electricity, in PoS miners buy digital tokens. It's exactly the same, except PoS is less detrimental to the environment.
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