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US SEC sues Coinbase, one day after suing Binance

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Re: US SEC sues Coinbase, one day after suing Binance

#71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This requires a citation with data points, eg how many Americans lost money, how much money did they lose, etc. My coworker lost $X0,000 over Celsius. So yes, maybe this is a personal bias. But its based in reality. His entire account at Celsius is written off. He managed to save his money from Voyager. I got cousins who lost money in FTX. Different people, but same overall problem. If my personal social circle is…

> If my personal social circle is showing huge losses in these companies, I have to imagine that other people out there have similar experiences. This is a personal bias. I've made $86,000 trading Ethereum. My brother-in-law made $24,000 trading Bitcoin. My reality is different from your reality ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I can't speak for Celsius, Voyager, and FTX. If there was a scam, it has to be punished. No questions asked. But…

> I've made $86,000 trading Ethereum

That's not the problem.

The problem is that companies like Celsius, FTX, and Voyager are disappearing and collapsing.

Binance and Coinbase are two other companies that could just randomly disappear because of how incredibly sketchy their products are (especially "Earn" or "Staking" products).

I'm pointing out companies that collapse (taking literally Billions of American money away). And you're just coming in here saying "But I made money on something totally unrelated", as if its a good argument?

> This is a personal bias.

I'll proudly be biased in favor of reality. There's nothing wrong with taking a stance when my real world friends get affected.

> I can't speak for Celsius, Voyager, and FTX. If there was a scam, it has to be punished. No questions asked. But Coinbase has been closely working with SEC for years.

Coinbase is doing the same thing as Celsius, Voyager, and FTX with their Earn / Staking products. And now the SEC is suing them over it.

There's a pattern here. And I for one, am glad that the SEC is no longer fickle and is trying to be proactive about it. Trying to get American money out of these dangerous instruments before they collapse, rather than after (when its too late).

Re: US SEC sues Coinbase, one day after suing Binance

#72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

bitcoin's performance since late 2017 lags QQQ. the rolling 5-year returns have gotten way worse. Much of the gains were from pre-2018. many people five years ago were predicting six-figures by now, nowhere even close.

Huh? BTC is up 56% YTD, QQQ is up 34.5%. Over five years BTC is up 300%, QQQ is 100%. Over life BTC is 7850% while QQQ is 570%. Today QQQ is up 0.12%, BTC is up 0.95%. I don’t know which slice you want to compare but general holds of BTC have outperformed QQQ significantly, even today it’s done better while it’s two largest exchanges have been sued by the SEC.

bitcoin peaked at 20k in 2017. it is only up 30 percent to 26k. QQQ is up a lot more. over 5.5 years of weak performance. The major problem with bitcoin are the huge declines like in 2018 and 2022. It stopped going up as much anymore either like it did in 2013 or 2017.

Re: US SEC sues Coinbase, one day after suing Binance

#73
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the use of crypto again? Because I think it's kinda useless. Just like NFT's

Crypto is for coordinating group behavior in the presence of powerful adversaries (e.g. governments), always has been.

Umm, OK. Funny that's not how it's been marketed. But I'm baffled as to how cryptocurrency is better for doing that than all of the other ways of doing that.

Re: US SEC sues Coinbase, one day after suing Binance

#74
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think ETH should have been classified as one too, due to its ICO. Making an exemption for that was a mistake...

Let's ask Gensler what are his thoughts about ETH then https://twitter.com/sassal0x/status/1648338351832064003 Oh wait ... :-)

That's amazing on the level of refusal to answer a simple question.

Re: US SEC sues Coinbase, one day after suing Binance

#76

Always interesting how crypto prices tank after legal action is announced against exchanges. Isn't the whole point to be decentralized in the first place? Hard to believe the whole dip is due to people wanting to get their tokens off the exchanges.

looks like the price barely changed

Re: US SEC sues Coinbase, one day after suing Binance

#77
post #48

If you look up the definitions of "security", "financial instrument", "commodity", and "currency", it is pretty clear that a plain vanilla crypto-currency like Bitcoin is no ordinary security nor a financial instrument. It is not a claim on something else, even less so than a traditional bank note. It is more like a commodity. Since when is "aluminum" a security? A crypto currency business however may be engaged in t…

I read them and concluded that Bitcoin fits currency very well.

While googling those terms I also found that gold is defined as a currency in the open market.

I'm pretty sure the us sec will figure it out for us

Re: US SEC sues Coinbase, one day after suing Binance

#78
post #48

If you look up the definitions of "security", "financial instrument", "commodity", and "currency", it is pretty clear that a plain vanilla crypto-currency like Bitcoin is no ordinary security nor a financial instrument. It is not a claim on something else, even less so than a traditional bank note. It is more like a commodity. Since when is "aluminum" a security? A crypto currency business however may be engaged in t…

No one said Bitcoin is a security...The issue is that howey test might be too old to work on cryptos.

Re: US SEC sues Coinbase, one day after suing Binance

#79
post #23

There is a well-documented public history of Coinbase taunting the SEC - they had it coming. - https://www.coinbase.com/blog/the-sec-has-told-us-it-wants-t... - https://www.coinbase.com/blog/coinbase-does-not-list-securit... - https://www.coinbase.com/blog/coinbases-staking-services-are... - https://www.coinbase.com/blog/we-asked-the-sec-for-reasonabl... - https://www.coinbase.com/blog/coinbase-takes-another-formal-.…

None of those posts except the last looks like taunting the SEC to me, but rather keeping the public and their customer base in particular up to date on a live regulatory issue that may present a risk to their business. That is the type of thing the SEC requires (at least of publicly traded companies) not discourages.

Re: US SEC sues Coinbase, one day after suing Binance

#80
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not that I agree with the own planet thing; but yes -- it's odd. All of this was 100% predictable and should have been expected by everyone. The stated purpose of crypto was to get around this; its weird to see crypto fans "get mad" at e.g. the SEC. It's like getting mad at a shark for going after bleeding prey; it's just what was always going to happen.

Mad because some entrepreneurs makes the effort to build legitimate business entities, and what certain governments find to do is any scheme to keep them out of legitimity. Not that crypto fans would care all that much about these businesses, but there is a need to onramp and offramp given transactions are made in their vast majority in fiat. An exchange run as a business having at least a lot at stake in ensuring co…

Yeah, but let's be real. I 100% believe in the big picture theory of crypto, but it's not at all unreasonable for the parties in charge to see what's actually happening to real people and to be like "this is NOTHING but scams."

I don't have a lot of sympathy for whingeing about "the SEC is treating us unfairly." They're doing their job. If "crypto-at-large" wants to be an acceptable business thing, then it needs to better protect people from getting scammed; present regime of crypto things have nearly absolutely failed at this.

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