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

“But the SEC let us go public” and other flawed arguments in Coinbase's defense

newsletter.mollywhite.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

311–320 of 557 posts

Re: “But the SEC let us go public” and other flawed arguments in Coinbase's defense

#311

Post by Eisenstein »

everfree wrote: post #262
jeltz wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here in the real world that is the software company's problem. Countries do not change their laws just to make some random accounting software company happy, unless they bribe some politicians first. Accounting software have tons of local adaptations.

>Countries do not change their laws just to make some random accounting software company happy Countries change laws to give their citizens access to important products. It's not about the company. The USA didn't decide to rewrite existing telephony laws for VOIP in the 90s because they wanted to give Skype a handout, they did it because they understood the potential benefits of internet telephony for the populous. >…

> Countries change laws to give their citizens access to important products. It's not about the company.

And Congress was lobbied to do that and they declined. Is your argument that 'they should have done it' means 'the SEC isn't allowed to enforce existing regulations'?

Re: “But the SEC let us go public” and other flawed arguments in Coinbase's defense

#312

Post by Demmme »

everfree wrote: post #13

I stopped reading the article when it started comparing cryptocurrency exchanges to the business of selling heroin. No matter your opinion on the issue, that's just alarmist nonsense. I agree that it's reasonable to apply existing securities laws to cryptocurrency, and I agree that "but they let us go public" is a bad argument, but Gensler's SEC has also been intentionally obtuse about how those securities laws shoul…

All upcoming regulations are dimentrical.

Crypto was advertised as decentralized and unregulated.

Most arguments I had with cryptobros were some sudo arguments about this stuff instead of just omitting that it's all about speculations.

Re: “But the SEC let us go public” and other flawed arguments in Coinbase's defense

#313

Post by AniseAbyss »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #227
lancewiggs wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their job is to make sure that the IPO document discloses everything material so that investors can make an informed decision. That’s it. In this case they would’ve been content with the disclosure that the entire business was at risk of being regulated, which is what’s happening here.

One of their jobs is to protect consumers from unregulated securities. The earlier they act, the better, and right before IPO is the most impactful time they could intervene. > In this case they would’ve been content with the disclosure that the entire business was at risk of being regulated They don't have to do it, but they could make that risk disappear and it would be very good if they did so. So I wish they did…

[dead]

Re: “But the SEC let us go public” and other flawed arguments in Coinbase's defense

#314

Post by junofan »

Eisenstein wrote: post #288
friend_and_foe wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but I think first, they ought to tell us what their criteria is in no uncertain terms.

Sorry but law enforcement entities do not have a mandate for, nor are they required to, tell you specifically whether an act is expressly legal or illegal if you ask them. Call a police department and ask them if you are allowed to bury your recently deceased relative on your property. They will tell you to get a lawyer. If they feel like arresting you for illegal disposal of human remains you can't use the defense '…

Come on. The SEC is also a regulatory agency. Your police department isn’t.

Re: “But the SEC let us go public” and other flawed arguments in Coinbase's defense

#315

Post by nuclx »

throwaway22032 wrote: post #38

It's not clear to me why almost any of these coins even need to be listed by regulated exchanges. Couldn't they just stick with BTCUSD and a few others then let decentralized exchanges deal with crypto-crypto trade? Would they really lose that much business? I always assumed (though I've never actually checked, it doesn't interest me that much) that almost all of the shitcoins were like, the long tail few % of revenu…

It's just a first step. Transferring crypto from a DEX to a fiat offramp may be restricted or illegal in the future.

Re: “But the SEC let us go public” and other flawed arguments in Coinbase's defense

#316

Post by mtlmtlmtlmtl »

mathieuh wrote: post #296
saiya-jin wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Opium was used to settle fussy babies (note, I'm sure it was very effective) In central/eastern Europe, there was historically brew/tea being done from poppy heads, to calm down babies. Generally poppy growing is very much allowed in places like Slovakia and Czech republic and part of many cakes and pastries, and nobody thought about doing opium/heroin out of it. But go over the border to Poland and its all banned,…

You can make poppy seed tea with unwashed poppy seeds. From experience, you even used to be able to buy unwashed poppy seeds from Amazon in the UK. It's incredibly addicting and even harder to quit than heroin, because there are many alkaloids present in the tea, all with different half-lives and strengths. All you'd do is pour some seeds into a bottle, add some citric acid, add some strong-tasting liquid to cover th…

I'd like to add that doing this is very risky, because it can be quite hard to know how strong the tea ends up being, and so it's easy to take too much. And poppy seed tea absorbs a lot faster than you might expect too. I had friends who were "seasoned" opioid users who supposedly knew what they were doing, who OD'd and died from poppy seed tea.

Re: “But the SEC let us go public” and other flawed arguments in Coinbase's defense

#317

Post by xinayder »

hbbio wrote: post #289
bb88 wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TIL to stop reading the top voted comment if it appears to be outrage and just read the article for myself instead. Just FYI here's the quote in context. She's posing a hypothetical here and not actually comparing Coinbase to a heroin dealer. This is very much in the style of Matt Levine at Bloomberg, btw. If a company went to the FDA and said “hello, we’d like to start selling heroin to the public for recreational u…

Which is a completely flawed comparison, not because of the matter but because unlike the hypothetical heroin case, the SEC *did approve the listing*.

Not really because she mentions SEC doesn't evaluate the businesses themselves when they apply for an IPO.

Coinbase doing an IPO (and them using this argument against SEC) is not being compared to heroin.

The comparison is that Coinbase would go to SEC and ask "hey we want to sell these bitcoin futures and securities, is it okay?" and SEC says "nope it isn't" and Coinbase just says "okay we'll sell it anyways", which is exactly what they did.

They knew the law existed and applied to crypto, yet they decided to go against it anyways because they thought they could get away with interpretation shenaningans.

Re: “But the SEC let us go public” and other flawed arguments in Coinbase's defense

#318

Post by Eisenstein »

junofan wrote: post #314
Eisenstein wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry but law enforcement entities do not have a mandate for, nor are they required to, tell you specifically whether an act is expressly legal or illegal if you ask them. Call a police department and ask them if you are allowed to bury your recently deceased relative on your property. They will tell you to get a lawyer. If they feel like arresting you for illegal disposal of human remains you can't use the defense '…

Come on. The SEC is also a regulatory agency. Your police department isn’t.

This changes what, exactly? Are you suggesting that the government act as a free lawyer to everyone asking?

Example: 'Would it be fraud if I bought an Amazon gift card with my credit card and sold it for cash since that would be a cash advance but it went through as a regular purchase?'

Would you expect that the FTC answer that question for you in a binding way?

Re: “But the SEC let us go public” and other flawed arguments in Coinbase's defense

#319

Post by AniseAbyss »

raverbashing wrote: post #261
rjbwork wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be absurdly burdensome and expensive for the government to have to advise people on how to follow the law when they're not following the law. If you're not sure how to follow the law, get an expert in the law! That's why there's a regulated profession that explicitly provides expert advice on following the law. I don't want to press too far, because I don't think you actually meant it, but...it's like you're…

Actually the law is not always clear cut and there's a lot of clarifications, appeals, etc that are brought to the regulatory agencies

[dead]

Re: “But the SEC let us go public” and other flawed arguments in Coinbase's defense

#320

Post by __alexs »

RestlessMind wrote: post #25

I like reasoned critiques of crypto. Heck, I think many crypto actors are scammers and should be punished. However, a lot of crypto is legit and this piece reeks of bias. Some examples: - comparison with heroin - wtf? To extend that ridiculous analogy, it would be akin to FDA approving heroin based products (similar to how SEC approved Bitcoin ETF in 2021) and then going after heroin. What message is SEC trying to de…

They are not 'scare quotes' because it is a literal quote of Rep. Warren Davidson. One of the people who introduced the act the paragraph is talking about. It helps explain the purpose of the act and the position the people who wrote it in their own words.
Post reply on HN