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Brave raises $35M in 1 min with ICO

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Re: Brave raises $35M in 1 min with ICO

#51
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not regulated, and they are not selling equity/shares in the company

sure, but the idea is the same. You bet on a company and you then sell for a profit.

Purchasing shares is much more than betting on a company. It's giving them money for a percent ownership of the company. Share ownership gives you voting rights on the company direction, a claim to the company's assets and profits, the potential for dividends payments, the right to sue directors for acting against the interest of the company, the right to recover losses from misleading statements and actions by corporate directors. These coins entitle you to nothing, and allow these companies to sidestep regulations that protect investors from scams. All these things were put in place because your average person doesn't know what they're doing, and they think stock ownership is just gambling. In fact, for many investors with little to no cash to invest, it is gambling. Can you afford a lawsuit to recover your $35,000, should your investment disappear into the ether because of malicious executives running a scam? Probably not. There is a very good reason why millionaires and high income individuals can become registered investors and can be solicited for funds by risky startups and nanocaps. The SEC doesn't want people who can't afford to recover from a scam to be solicited for investments. That's why publicly traded companies must file regular financial statements while non-listed companies must have investors go to them of their own free will.

Re: Brave raises $35M in 1 min with ICO

#52

Lol, nobody understands what really happened here. Myself included! They used some kind of digital currency to purchase shares in an upcoming venture? I'd love to try to explain this to my grandma

I'm a software engineer and I can barely explain it to myself.

Haha right

Re: Brave raises $35M in 1 min with ICO

#53

What exactly does this mean? Brave raised $35m? I find that hard to believe but wow if that's true.

They conducted an ERC20 token sale on the Ethereum network. It sold out in seconds. The tokens (BAT - Basic Attention Token) are to be used to buy advertising in the "attention economy." The premise is really interesting, but the dynamics of the Ethereum token sale space are borderline insanity at the moment, and will continue to be until most of the fools are parted with their ether either by a company that fails or…

When Mt. Fox failed, nobody called for more regulation of bitcoin exchanges.

I think many people have decided that regulation just ends up benefitting the established players at this point.

Re: Brave raises $35M in 1 min with ICO

#54
post #23

What's the incentive for a user to switch to the Brave browser? What advantages does it have over a different browser using ad- and tracker-blocking plugins, especially now that the Brave browser allows ads from these ad providers?

I use Brave on Android almost exclusively. Its built on Chromium with built in ad blocking.

Re: Brave raises $35M in 1 min with ICO

#55

All these ICO's have been avoiding any SEC regulation regarding private security sales by claiming the tokens are just a method to use/exchange services on their platform, not as an investment. However, when ICO's like this one keep happening where only 100 "accounts" own 99% of the ICO offering, you pretty much lose that argument of the tokens only being there for use of the platform. It's a private security sale, a…

I think the notion of accredited investor is very discriminatory to small investors. It's basically says - if you already wealthy then you have an access to attractive investment opportunities with huge upside (and of course, huge risk), if you are just a middle class man then stay where you are (since your investment options with huge upside are severely limited and you don't have enough capital to make sense from investing in index).

The better version of requirements for accredited investors would be some sort of exam (hard enough to make sure you have solid knowledge about financial markets, financial instruments and risk/return relationship).

Re: Brave raises $35M in 1 min with ICO

#56
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A political donation is an act of public speech. I think it's ok to care about the beliefs and views of the officers and board members of a company.

His hazing and firing from Mozilla really sounded like a concession favoring discrimination.

When you stand in a position of power and privilege, then your responsibilities are (or should be) commensurately greater

Re: Brave raises $35M in 1 min with ICO

#58
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not regulated, and they are not selling equity/shares in the company

sure, but the idea is the same. You bet on a company and you then sell for a profit.

Equity in a company and the tokens the company issues are two separate entities. The tokens only have value because people speculate on them (though some tokens promise to distribute revenue to the token holders through smart contracts in the future).

It's possible we see companies in the future that exist solely on the blockchain and don't have a legal entity, and tokens effectively are shares in the company, with voting rights. But that's not what we have today.

Re: Brave raises $35M in 1 min with ICO

#59
post #49

Plus, I don't really see any reason to be impressed by "the founder also created JavaScript". That's just like saying "the founder is a famous fuck-up whose legacy has made you suffer".

Read the history of JavaScript sometime. It's not his fault that the language has so many flaws. He had 10 days to create it [0]! If he'd been given a normal budget and schedule and free license to design the language, we might've​ had something more like Scheme [1]. [0] https://www.w3.org/community/webed/wiki/A_Short_History_of_J... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JavaScript

I'm familiar with the history of JavaScript. I still blame Brendan for not speaking up about how stupid it was to design and ship a new programming language in 10 days. Then there's the homophobe thing. Then there's the replacing ads on websites with his own (since rolled back). Eich's name on your project is not something to be proud of.

I give Brave some credit for at least being open source, compared to the likes of Vivaldi. At the same time, -1 to built-in integrations with proprietary password managers.

Re: Brave raises $35M in 1 min with ICO

#60

All these ICO's have been avoiding any SEC regulation regarding private security sales by claiming the tokens are just a method to use/exchange services on their platform, not as an investment. However, when ICO's like this one keep happening where only 100 "accounts" own 99% of the ICO offering, you pretty much lose that argument of the tokens only being there for use of the platform. It's a private security sale, a…

I think the notion of accredited investor is very discriminatory to small investors. It's basically says - if you already wealthy then you have an access to attractive investment opportunities with huge upside (and of course, huge risk), if you are just a middle class man then stay where you are (since your investment options with huge upside are severely limited and you don't have enough capital to make sense from i…

Equity crowdfunding by non-accredited investors is recently legal in the US due to the JOBS Act, yet none of these ICOs use it.
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