No shit - by the time a company hits a public market, accredited investors are the ones who cash out. ICOs, invested in with some research and diligence can finally spread the wealth to the rest of us.
Initial Coin Offerings Horrify a Former S.E.C. Regulator
161–170 of 194 posts
Re: Initial Coin Offerings Horrify a Former S.E.C. Regulator
#162Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, that all sounds fine. Protect average people, not startups trying to get rich. Yes. Yes. Yes. Life does not revolve around startups. Yes. Also, the people applying for home loans weren't compulsive gamblers. The banks literally told them they were qualified.
You are protecting investors from competition. Harming startups, harming founders, employees and consumers.
That doesn't sound like a very big deal. Average people are suffering actual material harm at the hands of predatory companies and you're worried about startup founders?! "The poor startup founders, they have slightly less of a chance to make even more money!!!" – said no one, ever. This is the saddest argument for removing financial protections I've ever heard. Again, life does not revolve around startups.
Re: Initial Coin Offerings Horrify a Former S.E.C. Regulator
#163Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why dont we regulate everything like that. Why do we allow people to spend 2M$ on a Car or 6k$ on a bag? Why do we allow people to buy unlimited lottery tickets or gamble everything away in the casino? Those examples have cleary less benefit for society then the dumbest investment strategy. Let people invest, sure tons if people will lose their shirt but they will learn from it and stay away. Everyone else in the soc…
Because those things are not in and of themselves scams. Is it a bad idea to buy a $2M car or a 6k hand bag? Probably but at the end of the day you still get something out of it, an overpriced car or bag. The very nature of some of these ICO's is that you are getting literally someones word that something with no intrinsic or useful value will be worth something in the future. That's fine if you actually understand t…
#1 reason for privat bankruptcy in Germany are consumer credit default. From buying/leasing expensive cars and gadgets.
So people are going broke by the masses from buring money on shit they don’t need to impress people they hate cus advertisement told them to.
Shutting people off from investing their own money however they like is Elitist thinking!
Re: Initial Coin Offerings Horrify a Former S.E.C. Regulator
#164Earlier quoted context omitted.
> there is between 1 and 2 billion people working in coops Owner co-ops or worker co-ops? E.g. there are over a hundred million Americans who are members of co-ops, and millions of Americans who work for co-ops. But the number of Americans who actually work for worker co-ops (as opposed to owner co-ops like REI or Ace Hardware) is only a few thousand.
I thought all worker co-ops are owner co-ops? I see "membership" used in all of the numbers I find, so I guess workers counts are much smaller -- but there are tons of them in S.E. Asia.
To give an example, ShopRite is a co-op in the sense that all the store owners make purchases together to drive down costs, but from the worker's perspective it's no different than working at any other store. This is an owner co-op, because the owners of each store are working together so that each owner benefits.
A worker co-op is like what Twitter is trying to do, where they are holding a shareholder vote next month to determine if the employees can buy out the business from the owners and run it for their own benefit.
Re: Initial Coin Offerings Horrify a Former S.E.C. Regulator
#165Earlier quoted context omitted.
You are protecting investors from competition. Harming startups, harming founders, employees and consumers.
That doesn't sound like a very big deal. Average people are suffering actual material harm at the hands of predatory companies and you're worried about startup founders?! "The poor startup founders, they have slightly less of a chance to make even more money!!!" – said no one, ever. This is the saddest argument for removing financial protections I've ever heard. Again, life does not revolve around startups.
You have more sympathy for investors than founders and employees?
Put it up to a vote and the vast majority will do away with these restrictions. The people don't want it. Some people want it, and some people benefit from it. As its usual in economics, those groups are not the same.
"Financial protections" => the government collects a tax to impose a restriction on you, to benefit the richest class.
Re: Initial Coin Offerings Horrify a Former S.E.C. Regulator
#166Earlier quoted context omitted.
An accredited investor is just a term for someone allowed to invest in things not regulated by the SEC. If you think that EVERYONE should be able to invest in things not regulated by the SEC, you are basically saying that being regulated by the SEC should be completely voluntary (i.e. a company can choose to be regulated or not). You can argue that it should work like that, but we intentionally decided to make SEC re…
> You can argue that it should work like that, but we intentionally decided to make SEC regulation the rule, and only grant exceptions for investors who have demonstrated they can handle the risk. We had no say in this. The SEC unilaterally created modern day (1970s onward) accredited investor rules, although I'm sure they had their routine public comment period as if that made a difference. The 1930s Congress and pu…
Sorry, the idea of SEC regulation being the rule, with only limited exceptions, was what I meant by the 'intentionally decided' bit.
The exact mechanism for how an exemption is decided is certainly up for debate. I was simply saying the mandatory part was decided on by 'us'.
Re: Initial Coin Offerings Horrify a Former S.E.C. Regulator
#167Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the idea of accredited investors is that those investments are very risky, and it limits them to people who can "afford" the risk. An accredited investor may be able to bear the brunt of 9 investments being a total loss, to get to the 10th that hits it out of the park, while a non-accredited investor may have her/his life savings (or a substantial enough part of it) wiped out on the first 1 or 2 deals. I'm no…
The point of accredited investing is to lock the middle class out of the market. If the law was really about "protecting people", then gambling and the lottery would also be illegal. Also, why can't I sign a paper saying I accept the risk of investing? Why can't I become an accredited investor by passing a class? I can pass a series of classes to become an EMT and be trusted with peoples lives, but no classes are suf…
FWIW, in most of the US gambling is illegal and lotteries are often regulated by the State.
Re: Initial Coin Offerings Horrify a Former S.E.C. Regulator
#168Earlier quoted context omitted.
Accredited investors requirement is what allows one not to be a subject to Blue Sky laws. We did not have it before Blue Sky laws were added. Let me assure you civilized societies need to have a separation between 82 year old grandma Suzi and Paris Hilton.
> Accredited investors requirement is what allows one not to be a subject to Blue Sky laws. You think its a fair trade to lock 95% of Americans out of the investment market in order to protect the elderly? New law: accredited investing means passing a 1 week course to obtain an investment license, which must be renewed bianually. Now we can keep Grandma Suzy safe (because she hasn't passed the class) without locking…
I do not, frankly, care. Regulation should be uniform. If we do not care about Grandma Suzi being swindled by investment peddlers, we should allow people to invest into ICO and buyer beware. If we want to protect Grandma Suzi, we have rules and if a hot shot ICO investor wanna be happen to be hit by those rules so be it.
Re: Initial Coin Offerings Horrify a Former S.E.C. Regulator
#169Earlier quoted context omitted.
The point of accredited investing is to lock the middle class out of the market. If the law was really about "protecting people", then gambling and the lottery would also be illegal. Also, why can't I sign a paper saying I accept the risk of investing? Why can't I become an accredited investor by passing a class? I can pass a series of classes to become an EMT and be trusted with peoples lives, but no classes are suf…
FWIW, in most of the US gambling is illegal and lotteries are often regulated by the State.
There's loads of casinos though:
https://www.worldcasinodirectory.com/united-states/map
And aren't states mostly the beneficiaries of lotteries? Here the revenue is supposed to go to schools or something.
Re: Initial Coin Offerings Horrify a Former S.E.C. Regulator
#170Earlier quoted context omitted.
I mean, we need regulation because 1929. We need regulation because regulation promotes confidence in the market which increases participation in the market. Security regulation is among the easiest government regulation to justify from a market perspective.
It isn't the government's job to "increase participation in the market".
Governments are political beasts, if they are working correctly they respond to the will of the people, and if the people decide that "something must be done about financial scams" they make laws.
It's how democracies work