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Statement on Potentially Unlawful Online Platforms for Trading Digital Assets

sec.gov

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Re: Statement on Potentially Unlawful Online Platforms for Trading Digital Assets

#151

Post by mdip »

jeffreyrogers wrote: post #53
LAMike wrote: post #51

What will the SEC do when 0x decentralized exchanges pop up? There are already a dozen in development... pure p2p trading from a hardware wallet... https://0xproject.com/

You have to convert USD to some cryptocurrency at some point, and vice-versa, so that's what they'll regulate.

Well, currently you have to convert cryptocurrency into hard currency to use it, but the former isn't true. I have mined all of my cryptocurrency and that's pretty common among my peers.

Money changed hands for me to get that currency -- money paid to the power company and to a few eBay sellers for video cards -- but nothing requiring an exchange fit-for-purpose.

If purchasing with cryptocurrency ever truly becomes a thing (yeah, I know it exists, but it's rare and becoming more rare these days), that will affect the other side, as well.

Re: Statement on Potentially Unlawful Online Platforms for Trading Digital Assets

#152

Post by IncRnd »

crypt1d wrote: post #114
scblock wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this the same oppressive regime that surveils, firewalls and filters the internet and other forms of communication that this idea depends on?

I see you are trying to be clever, but that comment doesn't really bring anything to the table. Sure, you can try to filter/block crypto transactions but that will be A LOT harder than blocking dissident blogs. One of the biggest selling points of many decentralized systems is to be censorship resistant.

Blocking these transactions is trivial to do. Employers detect and block them constantly.

The purported censorship resistance of these coins has nothing to do with the shape of the traffic.

Re: Statement on Potentially Unlawful Online Platforms for Trading Digital Assets

#153

Post by IncRnd »

CryptoPunk wrote: post #83
aje403 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course they would have laughed in their face. Do you see Nasdaq trying to list Dogecoin? There is no ambiguity or uncertainty here - there is a big problem and they're trying to reign it in with gloved hands before it becomes one and it turns into a big economic mess that the government will have to foot the bill to eventually clean up. This site likes to complain about wealthy inequality - common people like your…

>>they're trying to reign it in with gloved hands before it becomes one and it turns into a big economic mess that the government will have to foot the bill to eventually clean up. The government has no obligation to clean up anything. Claiming otherwise is just an excuse to prohibit people from investing into high-risk assets. >>common people like your grandparents and uninformed but good hearted relatives are provi…

> The government has no obligation to clean up anything. Claiming otherwise is just an excuse to prohibit people from investing into high-risk assets.

Would you share what government you reference?

Re: Statement on Potentially Unlawful Online Platforms for Trading Digital Assets

#154

Post by TomMarius »

diab0lic wrote: post #136
TomMarius wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a better way to say it is that it helps to prevent turns of current regimes (that already have Internet infrastructure built and used) into oppressive regimes.

Do you honestly believe that would-be oppressive regimes with existing internet infrastructure will not turn oppressive because crypto? In the most optimistic scenario this argument deals with b but still suffers from a.

No, but I think it helps more than it hurts. It's still in the beginning.

Re: Statement on Potentially Unlawful Online Platforms for Trading Digital Assets

#155

Post by kgwgk »

lagadu wrote: post #56
Edmond wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

couldn't have said it better. The very idea that a random citizen in a modern country can invent their own notion of money is beyond problematic so it is confounding that this whole thing has been allowed to mushroom into what it is today. Proponents like to drag skeptics into crypto debates but that is far off the mark when it comes to the real implications of the current situation. Some questions to ponder: When wi…

"money" is a representation of value that is recognised as such by a group of people. If a few people decide that a bunch of stones are now money[0] (in other words, represents value), should they be arrested? Similarly, when a group does the same not to stones but to seashells [1] or salt are they committing securities fraud? Someone decides to do the same for a few hashes on the internet and suddenly they can't? Wh…

> If a few people decide that a bunch of stones are now money, should they be arrested?

As long as they pay (using real money!) the taxes owed on the economic transactions carried using this alternative currency, I think they will be fine.

Re: Statement on Potentially Unlawful Online Platforms for Trading Digital Assets

#156

Post by cal5k »

tptacek wrote: post #126
cal5k wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The Commission has determined not to pursue an enforcement action in this matter based on the conduct and activities known to the Commission at this time" I mean... it sounds to me like they did their due diligence. The PDF contains an in-depth look at how existing securities law intersects with what this group was doing. That's exactly what the SEC is supposed to do. DAOs are new and unfamiliar. They looked at what…

Again: what you can say with authority is that they decided not to pursue action at that time . You have no idea what their future plans are.

True. And if at some point in the future their actions become aggressive and unreasonable, I would have a far less charitable view.

I can only judge them based on their actions to date, not what they might do in the future.

Re: Statement on Potentially Unlawful Online Platforms for Trading Digital Assets

#157

Post by JumpCrisscross »

djrogers wrote: post #149
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The government has no obligation to clean up anything And yet, when millions of individual investors lose more than they can afford that's often what must happen to preserve the peace. If Bitcoin went to $100 today, at the very least we'd see a massive hit to unemployment and disability rolls.

> If Bitcoin went to $100 today, at the very least we'd see a massive hit to unemployment and disability rolls. I don’t think the facts support this. As big as bitcoin’s market cap is globally, it doesn’t actually appear to be causing a lot of employment.

> As big as bitcoin’s market cap is globally, it doesn’t actually appear to be causing a lot of employment

Wealth effects are real [1]. Moreover, I know at least a handful of otherwise-intelligent individuals who used their credit cards to make leveraged Bitcoin plays. At the very least, they'll face collections and potentially bankruptcy as a result of the crypto crash.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_effect

Re: Statement on Potentially Unlawful Online Platforms for Trading Digital Assets

#158

Post by hueving »

tptacek wrote: post #125
cal5k wrote: post #77

I'm flabbergasted by how much disinformation is infecting this threat. If you look at the list of legal actions the SEC has pursued at the bottom of the article, they are all flagrant violations of securities law and clearly unethical practices. For example, in "SEC v. Jon E. Montroll and Bitfunder", the individual in question was accepting "investments" in his exchange that were clearly securities (probably fitting…

This comment is written as if it says something important, but really doesn't say anything at all. It would be monumentally newsworthy if there was clear guidance that Bitcoin and Ethereum "weren't securities" (more generally: that businesses that simply deal in Bitcoin were generally outside the purview of securities regulation). But we do not in fact know that right now. No expert believes that you can look at the…

>This comment is written as if it says something important, but really doesn't say anything at all.

It's ambiguous what 'it' refers to (comment vs. the article) in your sentence. If you meant the comment, then I disagree because it doesn't pretend to say something 'important', it just points out that the article doesn't introduce anything new for people doing things that aren't clearly a scam under existing laws.

If you meant the article doesn't say anything important, then I agree and I don't think the comment you replied to says anything different.

Re: Statement on Potentially Unlawful Online Platforms for Trading Digital Assets

#159

Post by cal5k »

hueving wrote: post #158
tptacek wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This comment is written as if it says something important, but really doesn't say anything at all. It would be monumentally newsworthy if there was clear guidance that Bitcoin and Ethereum "weren't securities" (more generally: that businesses that simply deal in Bitcoin were generally outside the purview of securities regulation). But we do not in fact know that right now. No expert believes that you can look at the…

>This comment is written as if it says something important, but really doesn't say anything at all. It's ambiguous what 'it' refers to (comment vs. the article) in your sentence. If you meant the comment, then I disagree because it doesn't pretend to say something 'important', it just points out that the article doesn't introduce anything new for people doing things that aren't clearly a scam under existing laws. If…

Hmmm, very good point - I think I might have misinterpreted that line. The danger of an unclear subject ;-)

Agreed. The main thrust of my comment was that this is a non-article, and yet it seemed to be inviting commenters to lay out their pet theories on the validity of cryptocurrency as though they were validated somehow by the article's contents.

Re: Statement on Potentially Unlawful Online Platforms for Trading Digital Assets

#160

Post by maaaats »

tptacek wrote: post #125
cal5k wrote: post #77

I'm flabbergasted by how much disinformation is infecting this threat. If you look at the list of legal actions the SEC has pursued at the bottom of the article, they are all flagrant violations of securities law and clearly unethical practices. For example, in "SEC v. Jon E. Montroll and Bitfunder", the individual in question was accepting "investments" in his exchange that were clearly securities (probably fitting…

This comment is written as if it says something important, but really doesn't say anything at all. It would be monumentally newsworthy if there was clear guidance that Bitcoin and Ethereum "weren't securities" (more generally: that businesses that simply deal in Bitcoin were generally outside the purview of securities regulation). But we do not in fact know that right now. No expert believes that you can look at the…

> This comment is written as if it says something important, but really doesn't say anything at all.

What?

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