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

451–460 of 557 posts

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

#451

Post by JeremyNT »

miracle2k wrote: post #378

When approving the S-1, the SEC was asked to review a business, not one selling filtration technology, but one selling illegal securities , well within their area of expertise. I think Americans should fairly expect their regulators to be clear enough about the rules that the very securities regulator, whose job in large part it is to protect retail investors, not allow a company who is in the business of selling ill…

> Any crypto sceptic who does not see a problem with this is tainted by their priors.

Who is this addressed at? I think most (any?) crypto skeptic would see the problems here and suggest that these exchanges should have been shut down much earlier. The fact that they were allowed to operate so long gave them the veneer of respectability which just brought in more suckers. Coinbase et al knew (or should have known) exactly what they were doing, they were making hey before the regulators caught up to them.

Nobody's claiming that the US legal system is perfect, but here we are. The wheels of justice grind away slowly. At least they're finally regulating these things.

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

#452

Post by FabHK »

tim333 wrote: post #431
miracle2k wrote: post #378

When approving the S-1, the SEC was asked to review a business, not one selling filtration technology, but one selling illegal securities , well within their area of expertise. I think Americans should fairly expect their regulators to be clear enough about the rules that the very securities regulator, whose job in large part it is to protect retail investors, not allow a company who is in the business of selling ill…

> I think Americans should fairly expect their regulators to be clear enough about the rules that... The trouble is that there aren't really clear existing rules - they are getting made at the moment by court judgement. If he had the power Ginsler would probably ban cryptocurrency but he doesn't.

Ginsler would definitely ban Etherium.

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

#453

Post by itairal »

avsteele wrote: post #40

All other arguments aside: the bottom line is that everyone who invested in crypto did it with the knowledge that Coinbase wasn't a securities broker. The SEC just can't imagine a world where customers are fine without their 'protection'. We don't want your help, we don't need your help. GO away.

[dead]

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

#454

Post by lolinder »

miracle2k wrote: post #448
hluska wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You made a good comment and then absolutely ruined it with your last sentence. Blanket statements like that are not only disrespectful but they’re useless. This isn’t Fox News…it is Hacker News. Second, you’re arguing they were involved in illegal activities since before going public. How do you know that for sure?

> You made a good comment and then absolutely ruined it with your last sentence. Blanket statements like that are not only disrespectful but they’re useless. This isn’t Fox News…it is Hacker News. I appreciate this feedback. I like how another commenter put it: "I think there is very little room for this sequence of events to be considered fine" - from a non-crypto-partisan, rule-of-law perspective. > Second, you’re…

> I like how another commenter put it: "I think there is very little room for this sequence of events to be considered fine" - from a non-crypto-partisan, rule-of-law perspective.

I would encourage you to consider your own priors and read the feedback that you're getting on this idea as well. In spite of your attempts to cut off opposition, there are a lot of very well-reasoned arguments for the SEC's approach.

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

#455

Post by FabHK »

eropple wrote: post #411
TeMPOraL wrote: post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> harmless, kid-friendly machines of today "Kid-friendly" but really kid-robbing, though - AFAIK most of arcade games that let you win something, e.g. a toy, have subprograms that can override your victory, making it look like you've lost; those are triggered randomly, based on venue-configurable parameters like "max winning rate" and "daily wins threshold". This is designed to ensure the venue always makes a profit,…

> "Kid-friendly" but really kid-robbing, though I worked in an arcade growing up, and you're not wrong about a lot of them--but pinball doesn't fall into that bucket. Every pinball machine I've ever seen is played pretty straight. Sometimes they have nasty game mechanics, but they don't have the issues you describe here (which is much more in the pseudogambling, Dave and Buster's style of games).

What frequently happens with pinballs though is that the score you need to get a free replay adjusts automatically so that the ratio of free games stays at a certain target percentage.

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

#456

Post by FabHK »

Hermitian909 wrote: post #95
pylua wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is the spirit of the law always aligned with the analytical meaning ? Do you think it is here ? I understand the spirit of the law, but I do not feel like that can override an analytical interpretation.

> I understand the spirit of the law, but I do not feel like that can override an analytical interpretation. You may feel so, but our entire legal tradition is based on the idea that this is not the case. In fact, no active legal tradition I'm aware of nation holds strictly to analytical interpretations of its laws. This is one aspect of the world it's better to accept as a fact of life, I believe there's good reason…

This makes enormous sense, and, incidentally, shows why the notion of "smart contracts", "the code is the law", etc. is pure folly.

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

#457

Post by miracle2k »

lolinder wrote: post #454
miracle2k wrote: post #448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You made a good comment and then absolutely ruined it with your last sentence. Blanket statements like that are not only disrespectful but they’re useless. This isn’t Fox News…it is Hacker News. I appreciate this feedback. I like how another commenter put it: "I think there is very little room for this sequence of events to be considered fine" - from a non-crypto-partisan, rule-of-law perspective. > Second, you’re…

> I like how another commenter put it: "I think there is very little room for this sequence of events to be considered fine" - from a non-crypto-partisan, rule-of-law perspective. I would encourage you to consider your own priors and read the feedback that you're getting on this idea as well. In spite of your attempts to cut off opposition, there are a lot of very well-reasoned arguments for the SEC's approach.

> In spite of your attempts to cut off opposition, there are a lot of very well-reasoned arguments for the SEC's approach.

Which ones do you find convincing?

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

#458

Post by FabHK »

roenxi wrote: post #328
arcticbull wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. So uh, you know you just described the opioid crisis in a nutshell right? Modern opioid painkillers are in fact generally if not entirely accurately, 'heroin based products.' Not just that, prior to the Narcotics Tax Act of 1914 it was kind of a fr…

I agree that you have an excellent point in relation to the thread ancestor, but to refocus the debate on the actual matter at hand: A key difference being that opioids have a very real potential to cause massive, undeniable and observable harm to casual users (like all mind altering drugs including alcohol). Crypto means that people can trade without having the regulators whitelist all the transactions. Historically…

Sorry, so the key difference is that opioids have the potential to be useful or harmful, and so should be regulated, while crypto has the potential to be useful or harmful, and so should not be regulated?

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

#459

Post by adsfgiodsnrio »

habitue wrote: post #17
triceratops wrote: post #5

Can anyone summarize what the stakes are here? Is a loss for Coinbase a company-ending event? Or is being forced to register all the coins that aren't BTC or ETH a costly regulatory burden? What are the implications of registering all these coins as securities? Does it affect whether they can be offered to non-accredited investors? How expensive is it? Who bears the costs?

The issue is that if most coins are securities, then that means in order to operate, Coinbase has to become a registered securities exchange in order for it to do what it does. The regulations for securities exchanges are onerous, but also many of them aren't possible to comply with for crypto because of how it works. So the SEC is saying "You are an unregistered securities exchange" And coinbase is saying "Please gi…

And the SEC is also saying "you don't get to ignore the rules just because you don't like them". Whatever the rules should be, it's clear Coinbase is on the wrong side of what they are now.

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

#460

Post by adsfgiodsnrio »

civilitty wrote: post #9
triceratops wrote: post #5

Can anyone summarize what the stakes are here? Is a loss for Coinbase a company-ending event? Or is being forced to register all the coins that aren't BTC or ETH a costly regulatory burden? What are the implications of registering all these coins as securities? Does it affect whether they can be offered to non-accredited investors? How expensive is it? Who bears the costs?

> Is a loss for Coinbase a company-ending event? We don’t do that kind of thing in America except for the occasional Enron when extreme levels of fraud are involved and someone takes out California’s electrical grid to boost profits. IANAL but these SEC violations don’t seem to fit the bill.

"OK, securities exchange, you can continue operating as long as you shut down the securities exchange."

I suppose they can keep the office cafeteria open.

Post reply on HN