Live data from Hacker News

Statement on Potentially Unlawful Online Platforms for Trading Digital Assets

sec.gov

211–220 of 282 posts

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

#211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>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. Sure they do. It's tasked with the ongoing operation and existence of the country, which can be threatened by economic instability. For example, Albania had a civil war literally over Ponzi scheme failures. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albanian_Civil_War > If the common good-hearted people are too stupid to control their own money, then they should be deprived…

>>For example, Albania had a civil war literally over Ponzi scheme failures.

Albania is a lawless country where people are murdered across generations in ongoing blood feuds. In such a setting, any major social crisis can trigger a civil war. The solution in Albania is not to restrict private economic exchange. It is to institute the rule of law, by consistently prosecuting crimes like homicide, so that people don't think that extra-judicial violence is an appropriate response to disputes.

There is no chance that a cryptocurrency dropping in value in the West would trigger a civil war, because the rule of law presides in the West.

You're using the violence inherent to Albanian culture, that is independent of any financial phenomenon, as an excuse for putting cryptocurrency traders in prison.

>>Slamming "Big Brother states" while advocating for the removal of the right to vote and legal personhood is... special.

Obviously the comment was not meant to be taken literally, as evident from the comment right after calling the approach "illiberal" and characterisic of police states.

My comment was meant to equate advocacy for removing the right to freely transact with advocacy for the removal of the right to vote. Both are the natural implication of the principle that the subject is too ignorant, stupid, gullible, etc to be given full agency.

Think of it this way: you want the good hearted and gullible people to not be allowed to transact without gatekeepers, but you want them to have the right to vote, without gatekeepers to protect them from demagogues? That's inconsistent.

In other words, I'm saying if you really think the typical person is so incompetent that there should be laws to prevent them from investing into assets that have not been vetted by a government agency, then you don't have enough faith in their competence to give them the right to vote.

Incidentally, the poorest households spend 9 percent of their income on lottery tickets. The fact that this is not only legal, but promoted by state-funded advertising, yet investing in securities issued by non-public companies is prohibited, shows that protecting the public is not the real motivation beyond laws against purchase of non-public securities.

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

#212
post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm personally very keen on "coin-mediated" finance. However, that doesn't mean I'm stupid enough to believe I can flout securities law without consequences. A public offering is still a public offering when you couch it behind a token, no matter how cleverly constructed your whitepaper. If the SEC was going to come down like a ton of bricks they would have done so already. I could be wrong, but their actions seem to…

I think reasonable people can disagree about the likelihood of upcoming enforcement actions. The only place where I feel entitled to get shouty about things is when people suggest that it's clear what the SEC is going to do next. I think it's easy to make a case that it's anything but clear. I definitely wouldn't feel comfortable proclaiming with any certainty that Bitcoin or Ethereum or even ICOs were definitely goi…

> My understand is that the SEC is generally a lot smaller than "we" think it is and it's sort of a random function. Cryptocurrency is super important to HN, but the SEC's definition of "systemically important" is different than ours.

Their mandate is to protect unsophisticated investors. That's why they weren't particularly interested in Madoff, and why the rules are so much laxer if you target "accredited investors."

Given that mandate, I think it's highly unlikely that they're going to go after romping, runaway successes. They'll focus on blatant pig-in-a-pokes.

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

#213
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…

I think the concept of accredited investor needs to go away though. Why should only the super rich be able to invest in risky ventures? Why do I see so many on the left supporting these regulations that only favour the super rich? I'm not just talking about crypto-currencies but any venture really, since the internet at least, anyone with an internet connection should be free to invest as they want. I'm personally no…

I think because finance is complicated and people can be ripped off or not understand their investment. It would be interesting to revise the accredited investor to allow small investments individually and in total (eg, no more than $1k/year or something).

Without this rule, grandma and grandpa would be constantly bilked by investing their $50k into bad investments.

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

#214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the concept of accredited investor needs to go away though. Why should only the super rich be able to invest in risky ventures? Why do I see so many on the left supporting these regulations that only favour the super rich? I'm not just talking about crypto-currencies but any venture really, since the internet at least, anyone with an internet connection should be free to invest as they want. I'm personally no…

>I think the concept of accredited investor needs to go away though. Why should only the super rich be able to invest in risky ventures? Because they can afford to take the hit if the investment fails.

People should be free to take financial risks. There's currently nothing stopping people from investing everything into a small business, or blowing it all at the casinos or on lottery tickets. There's no justification for singling out securities and limiting people's right to invest their money in them.

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

#215

"I'm not going to live by their rules anymore." -- Phil Connors, Groundhog Day

That isn’t really an option though, is it? You can live by their rules on the streets, or live with a much more stringent set of rules in prison.

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

#216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SEC is pursuing investigation of Tezos. Hardly flagrant as you term it. In fact, by the book token.

Source?

https://cointelegraph.com/news/sec-refuses-request-for-infor...

>"This exemption protects from disclosure records compiled for law enforcement purposes, the release of which could reasonably be expected to interfere with enforcement activities. Since Exemption 7(A) protects the records from disclosure, we have not determined if other exemptions apply. Therefore, we reserve the right to assert other exemptions when Exemption 7(A) no longer applies,"

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

#217

Regulated exchanges have in place a lot of measures to ensure transparency and protection of traders/investors including survailance systems which closely look at potential market manipulation. Currently no crypto exchange has such systems in place - even their matching engines are in question, as mentioned by the SEC. Given the amount of money that is traded every day at crypto exchanges the statement from SEC was e…

[deleted]

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

#218
post #80

This won't age well with the rise of decentralized exchanges like 0x

Unless the decentralized exchanges get a licence, they'll still be illegal, right? I could imagine jail time for the developers for knowingly supporting illegal activity would seriously dampen enthusiasm from the open source community. Also, depending on how decentralized such an exchange is, this would expose its customers to the same type of consequences (or possibly "just" large fines). It would not be too difficu…

I've never heard of anyone being prosecuted for writing open source code.

It would be a direct affront to the First Amendment, and it would be remarkable if the US government ever did this to anyone residing in the US, let alone someone residing in other countries where different laws apply.

I could maybe see the Chinese government taking such action, but it has much less influence globally than the US, and a relatively small portion of open source contributors reside in Mainland China.

>>It would not be too difficult to pass a law prohibiting consumers to knowingly trade on non-registered exchanges I'd think.

Such a law would be widely ignored. Just look at illegal filesharing.

Ultimately digital currency will force the US to decide whether it's a free society, or whether it mandates that people transact through centralized gatekeepers. Hopefully it will choose the former.

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

#219
Everyone knows that orders are executed fairly on SEC regulated exchanges, right? Ehhh, not really.

It's important to look back on Flash Boys and recognize the reality of regulated exchanges. Ultimately consumer demands will drive the ethical operation of any exchange.

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

#220
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So crazy thing about government, they can deem themselves regulators of anything. Some choices are certainly easier to police than others, granted, but they don’t have to massage their definitons to declare something illegal.

There's no massaging. The potentially illegality of many cryptoasset platforms has always been clear to everyone who wasn't in denial. They're trying to race ahead of law enforcement. Kind-of like Uber, but the SEC is a lot harder to plow through than local traffic enforcement. I, for one, welcome our PonziCoin-banning overlords.

>>I, for one, welcome our PonziCoin-banning overlords.

That's a pretty totalitarian outlook. You're not content with not using cryptocurrency yourself. You want to prevent everyone else, with punitive measures, from using it too.

Post reply on HN