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SEC Charges Kik With Conducting $100M Unregistered ICO

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Re: SEC Charges Kik With Conducting $100M Unregistered ICO

#331

Post by colechristensen »

CryptoPunk wrote: post #244
colechristensen wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The regulations indeed exist because fraud in this vein was prevalent and it made it difficult to compete if you weren't defrauding investors.

Do you have any evidence for that? There are other ways of addressing fraud besides violating people's right to freely contract with other consenting adults, like punishing those who commit fraud to deter others from committing the crime, and public education campaigns. The idea that the government has a right to deem a certain class of investors as "unsophisticated", and thus better off deprived of the right to deci…

I can't resist the snark, but it's serious too. Lottery tickets have better returns than early stage startups.

Re: SEC Charges Kik With Conducting $100M Unregistered ICO

#332

Post by peeters »

elkos wrote: post #241
kibwen wrote: post #59

The same Kik from the 2016 left-pad debacle on npm?

For anyone (like me) that needs a reminder: https://blog.npmjs.org/post/141577284765/kik-left-pad-and-np...

I'm confused from that summary why any of the left-pad debacle should be pinned on Kik. Maybe there was something behind the scenes I'm not seeing? From the post mortem NPM gave, this was entirely on Azer for rage quitting NPM (and for NPM for allowing it), fallout be damned. Even if you feel Kik bullied Azer into giving up the "kik" name (even though they made their case to NPM and deferred to them), that would only affect the kik package, not the 270 others Azer delisted.

Re: SEC Charges Kik With Conducting $100M Unregistered ICO

#333

Post by DennisP »

jki275 wrote: post #329
fastball wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What entity are you investing in when you purchase ETH?

Vitalik Buterin and the other whales who started it.

Development has expanded far beyond that crowd. There are eight different groups working on 2.0 clients, for example. This was part of the SEC's reasoning.

Re: SEC Charges Kik With Conducting $100M Unregistered ICO

#334

Post by CryptoPunk »

icebraining wrote: post #321
CryptoPunk wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>Yeah, and in ten years they might get $14, which will just give some extra profit to their creditors when they file for bankruptcy for unpaid medical bills, or be captured in a civil forfeiture. And if somehow they managed to keep it and actually save a couple grand, that just means they'll become ineligible for SNAP and lose much more in benefits. How is that any different than matching two numbers on a lotto tick…

> How is that any different than matching two numbers on a lotto ticket and winning $10, or $1000? That's immediately spendable; it doesn't sit somewhere where it can be taken (by illegal or legal means). That's also one of the reasons why people join susus instead of just saving, for example. > With real-world investing, especially in micro-caps, they have a chance to hit it big as well, and make millions. There's n…

Yea scratch cards can be immediately spendable, but weekly lottos aren't. People wait, just as they wait for a volatile penny stock to spike in price. I really don't see enough of a difference between the profit potential of penny stocks, and that of lotto tickets, to assume they would be treated any differently by retail consumers, except for the long-term differences, that would make the former more beneficial to the consumer.

>>There's no change of making millions in a day, or week. The few "rags-to-riches" trading millionaires progressively amassed their money over at least a few years.

Crypto-assets have seen many thousands of percent gains in a matter of days. I don't know if you could turn $2 into a million in one week the way you can with a lotto, but the gains I think are substantial enough to compete for lotto spending, especially considering that odds of gains can be improved by the buyer through research and analysis.

Re: SEC Charges Kik With Conducting $100M Unregistered ICO

#335

Post by jpm_sd »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #187
Animats wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But not an established profitable company. This is a money-losing startup looking for another funding round.

Vast majority of people don't understand how Internet startups are run. Even here on HN, people need frequent reminders. Myself, for a long time I believed tech startups are micro-R&D for new technologies. Couple years of HN and in the local startup community later, I finally realized that a lot of Internet startups tend to turn investor money into business model R&D - i.e. ever more innovative ways to break an exist…

"business model R&D" used to be called "fraud"

Re: SEC Charges Kik With Conducting $100M Unregistered ICO

#337

Post by vorpalhex »

penagwin wrote: post #113
vorpalhex wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> scam ICO It seems like you might of repeated yourself... This is the cryptocurrency roosters coming home to roost, no?

ICO is a fancy word for "Kick Starter" or crowdfunding. That's why all the crypto people are disagreeing with you. Are most ICO's scams? Yeah sadly. Are there lots of scams on Kickstarter/indiegogo/etc? Yes sadly. But an ICO itself isn't necessarily a scam (although I concede 99% of them are)

When I back a kickstarter, I'm probably going to get something like a signed book or a credit in a game - maybe not but at least most of the time.

In an ICO, I get a... theoretical security? A kik kin coin that may or may not have value?

Re: SEC Charges Kik With Conducting $100M Unregistered ICO

#338

Post by kaicianflone »

abalone wrote: post #328
kaicianflone wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will try to not laugh at this the next time I pay escrow and other closing fees. We are in Web 1.0 in terms of the technological application of programmable consensus.

One, don’t mock people on HN. Two, you’re going to need to cite real examples to support your claim, not just spout a bunch of buzzwords. Quick search of “ethereum escrow” returns no real implementations that avoid fees or human intermediaries. Every single blog post I’ve read that tries to sketch an alternative is incredibly poorly thought through and still vulnerable to fraud. That is why they are just blog posts a…

I'm not going to argue against ignorance. One can simply google the technology and see for themselves instead of drinking the Kool-aid from others. There's a reason for the large push against crypto; an agenda.

Programmable consensus and smart contracts are easy to learn concepts.

https://medium.com/coinmonks/escrow-service-as-a-smart-contr...

*Also one should know it is offensive to call another's work vaporware. Especially, when one is relying on anecdotes. Next I'm going to be told IBM and Google are wasting their time and shareholder money on blockchain.

Re: SEC Charges Kik With Conducting $100M Unregistered ICO

#339

Post by 8note »

CryptoPunk wrote: post #295
ibejoeb wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Likely that the majority here agrees in principal, but those things you're describing are different practices. You might liken an underground ICO to a bug chaser party where some participant doesn't even know what that is. That kind of stuff is a real problem, and there are plenty of scenarios where government prohibition isn't overstepping. In those cases, we're not protecting you from yourself, but rather protectin…

>>You might liken an underground ICO to a bug chaser party where some participant doesn't even know what that is. The vast majority of people applauding restrictions on securities offerings would vote against any party that advocated similar restrictions on high-risk sexual activity. That shows that most people are just conforming to the popular viewpoint, and not independently and critically thinking about the issue…

high risk sexual activity?

I can say most would oppose letting people would be against letting people have sex on a tightrope between two skyscrapers in new York, or in the aisle of a city bus

Re: SEC Charges Kik With Conducting $100M Unregistered ICO

#340

Post by penagwin »

vorpalhex wrote: post #337
penagwin wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ICO is a fancy word for "Kick Starter" or crowdfunding. That's why all the crypto people are disagreeing with you. Are most ICO's scams? Yeah sadly. Are there lots of scams on Kickstarter/indiegogo/etc? Yes sadly. But an ICO itself isn't necessarily a scam (although I concede 99% of them are)

When I back a kickstarter, I'm probably going to get something like a signed book or a credit in a game - maybe not but at least most of the time. In an ICO, I get a... theoretical security? A kik kin coin that may or may not have value?

I think you're confusing ICOs with market value.

You don't back an ICO because its "value will go to the moon", you back an ICO because invents a new way for -- Creators to get paid instead of using advertisements, creative ways to organize some kind of distributed system.

The scam comes from them not completing their promises and leaving with the money and no "product". The coin's value is irrelevant (as long as it isn't 0)

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