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US SEC sues Coinbase, one day after suing Binance

reuters.com

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

#331

Post by drexlspivey »

TimPC wrote: post #2

Crypto companies think they don't trade securities which is clearly wrong and contradicted by their own advertising. People buy crypto without a real use for crypto because they think they can sell it for more later. Everyone under the sun knows this. It's obviously a security and failing to register should be met by SEC cases like this one.

SEC is supposed to tell them what is a security and what isn’t so they can refrain from selling them. Exchanges have been asking for clarification over and over. So far the only thing the SEC said on the subject is that BTC in not a security but nothing about the other cryptos.

In the absence of regulatory clarity Coinbase have devised their own framework to classify what tokens aren’t securities and proceeded to list them. I don’t know how you can blame them. It’s the SEC’s job to tell them what they can trade and what they can’t but they refuse to do it.

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

#333

Post by EricDeb »

TimPC wrote: post #2

Crypto companies think they don't trade securities which is clearly wrong and contradicted by their own advertising. People buy crypto without a real use for crypto because they think they can sell it for more later. Everyone under the sun knows this. It's obviously a security and failing to register should be met by SEC cases like this one.

People buy houses, dont live in them, purely to sell them for more later.

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

#335

Post by xorcist »

qeternity wrote: post #249
CuriousCosmic wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> investment of money in a common enterprise with profits to come solely from the efforts of others This is where I see the "staking makes a cryptocurrency a security" fall apart. There are a handful of definitions for "staking" and some of them definitely meet the criteria of "a common enterprise with profits to come solely from the efforts of others" however many do not. 1. Ethereum's staking at a protocol level re…

You’re ignoring all the ICOs which are almost certainly unregistered security offerings. Ethereum was funded as a public ICO.

That doesn't even seem to be the issue here.

Which is weird. In my humble layman's opinion, an ICO looks an awful lot like a security offering, while a staking protocol doesn't.

Compare the simplified statements "Buy my token! It's going to be great in the future!" with "Let's pool our money and execute an agreed-upon protocol where those who have the most get more". Why is the SEC wasting time by going after all the weird ones before the easy pickings?

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

#336

Post by willcipriano »

freejazz wrote: post #299
whimsicalism wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not at all surprising to me that he would refuse to answer the question, but the precise reason he is doing that is so that the SEC has freedom of movement to regulate without being pinned down by public statements he has made in front of congress. But that entire notion belies the idea that the regulations are super clear or predictable. The whole reason for this kind of maneuver is because the regulations are…

You don't seem to understand that what he says isn't binding on the SEC

How does he or the SEC benefit by making a statement?

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

#337

Post by esonoi »

butlerm wrote: 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’m not a lawyer but work in the industry.

This is a slightly incorrect interpretation. Not all financial instruments are securities. Financial instruments are legal contracts between an issuer and one or more holders + other parties. If you own any stock in a company, you don’t own part of that company… what you own is a portion of a legal contract that defines what rights you have as a shareholder and what obligations the issuer has.

Currency isn’t a commodity. It’s treated as a commodity because they shares characteristics - you can buy and sell them over FX market. It’s a bit of an oddity because its value isn’t solely based on supply and demand, but stability and existence of a central authority controlling its supply.

(Opinion) Bitcoin, on the other hand, is a virtual Commodity. It is not recognized as a currency. Similarly, gold is a commodity but not a currency, though it does have a place as a non-standard currency in ISO-4217.

Commodities can be hedged against (oil futures) through derivative products. Those are formalized through a legal contract.

Your notion of a financial instrument doesn’t cover the fact that it is the legal contract involving money that makes it an instrument.

But as others have pointed out that’s not why the SEC is suing.

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

#338

Post by TylerE »

drexlspivey wrote: post #331
TimPC wrote: post #2

Crypto companies think they don't trade securities which is clearly wrong and contradicted by their own advertising. People buy crypto without a real use for crypto because they think they can sell it for more later. Everyone under the sun knows this. It's obviously a security and failing to register should be met by SEC cases like this one.

SEC is supposed to tell them what is a security and what isn’t so they can refrain from selling them. Exchanges have been asking for clarification over and over. So far the only thing the SEC said on the subject is that BTC in not a security but nothing about the other cryptos. In the absence of regulatory clarity Coinbase have devised their own framework to classify what tokens aren’t securities and proceeded to lis…

They did tell them - Howey test etc, Coinbase just didn't like the answer and thus has been pretending they didn't hear it.

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

#339

Post by mjburgess »

foodjinn wrote: post #319
mjburgess wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gensler was taken in by the tech angle -- duped by the (false) claim that this was a world-changing technical innovation. He was, for years, convinced that "revolutionary" blockchain technology was a viable peer-to-peer accounting ledger for a wide variety of assets. This is the problem with this area: lots of finance guys with no csci experience; lots of csci guys dumb on finance. Anyone who has enough experience of…

The SEC isn't catching up to it when they've explicitly refused to clarify to both the people they are trying to regulate and the lawmakers themselves on what they determine to be a security. The SEC created a situation by which any action could be deemed criminal and only decided to regulate when it was politically expedient to do so. There is no reason to believe they are doing this on behalf of protecting investor…

Never have new "technologies" been regulated "on release" by any government agency, i believe credit cards took ~20 years.

The SEC here is acting perhaps the fastest ever to the development of a new financial instrument.

The howey test was always clear to everyone invovled. The whole "SEC hasnt said anything yet" is a line used by liars to cover-up and distract from their patent fraud -- which takes place, not coincidently, off-shore. Every investigation so far has yielded plenty of internal chats to the effect of 'lol this is illegal lol lol'. No one here was in the dark, that's why everyone has redflags out-the-wazoo.

The background historical context here is also that gov cannot been seen to stifle new tech, and has to "give it its fair shot" absent regulation. Or else be blamed for its failure.

I think it's frankly obscene after the fraud-after-fraud-after-fraud that is the entire crypto system, that any body would pin anything on the SEC.

This is yet another lie designed to distract form the last 13 years of failure -- all the crypto system has done is breed massive amounts of fraud, money laundering, ransomware and the most industrialised grift in human history.

The SEC has not failed here one iota in comparison to this industrialised con.

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

#340

Post by TylerE »

modeless wrote: post #255
tyre wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nononononononononononono we don't get to play that game. The SEC has perfectly clearly communicated for years its regulatory clarity: most crypto-currencies are obviously securities. When Coinbase and others say "regulatory clarity", they want the answer to be some framework for how they can continue to sell crypto to everyone/anyone. But that's not the policy! Most of these coins are some combination of ponzi scheme…

That is the policy. The SEC has said that some cryptocurrencies are OK, like Bitcoin and Ethereum. And though today they gave a list of some they don't like, there are plenty of others that they still refuse to talk about despite explicit requests. What is the point of being opaque about it? It's not protecting investors, that's for sure. Seems more like they just want to be punitive.

New tokens are being spawned faster than the SEC could possibly do even a cursory analysis of them.
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