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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

#71

Post by Cshelton »

hal9000xp wrote: post #55
Cshelton wrote: post #21

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…

The effect of missing out on an upside is a lot less than taking a huge hit on the downside. It isn't discriminatory, it's protective.

It is sad but many people would put their entire savings and next months rent into a risky investment that is not publicly traded on a regulated market and basically lose their money most of the time because they invest on hype and because their buddy told them.

If an accredited investor loses his money, the nobody feels bad because they had the money in the first place and the means to either hire somebody who knows what they're doing or be responsible themselves.

I'd be fine with zero regulation on it all together, as long as I, as a tax payer, don't have to bail out all the idiots will fall for ponzi scheme after ponzi scheme. But do we let them dye on the streets because they lost everything? Hence why the regulation is in place.

You are also assuming that being an accredited investor gives you access to better investments, which is not entirely true. Many accredited investors lose their lunch on investments. Look at the number of hedge funds that beat a market index fund, it's like 10%. Or look at VC firms where 1 investment makes up for the loss of 10 others. Many never do get that return and just lose money until they're out. The best investment definition varies widely, and in actuality, most accredited investors would be better off just investing in an index fund because believe it or not, they don't know what they are doing most of the time either. Which is why many investments are high risk. So a test would not help either.

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

#72

Post by seibelj »

DennisP wrote: post #61
seibelj wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But if you own a token, you own nothing in the company, no equity, no promises, no contract signed, you don't have any right to any profits and Brave can say tomorrow that all the tokens are worthless. It's not so straight-forward that they raised investment, really they sold $35mil of a product. But IANAL, and you could easily be right, I'm just saying it isn't so cut and dry.

Depends on the token. In some cases, there's deployed code that enforces various rights...perhaps a share of fee revenue, or access rights to the platform. Whether the code is already deployed, or depends on further development effort by the team, is one aspect of the Howey Test, according to Coinbase which released the results of some legal research on the subject: https://blog.coinbase.com/2016-12-07-blockchain-tok…

From the FAQ:

> What do BATs represent?

> BATs are tokens in a new Blockchain and attention-based digital advertising platform. They are not refundable, nor are they securities or for speculation. There is no promise of future performance. There is no suggestion or promise that BAT has or will hold a particular value. BATs give no rights in the company and do not represent participation in the company. BATs are sold as a functional good. Any value received by company may be spent without conditions. BATs are meant only for experts in cryptographic tokens and blockchain-based software systems.

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

#73

Post by ThrustVectoring »

Cshelton wrote: post #21

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…

>an overbought token market fueled by Asian countries for the most part

Chinese capital controls has a huge amount of blame here. Because the Chinese government prevents the foreign exchange market from clearing at a lower price, there's tons of unmet demand for converting Renminbi to anything that isn't subject to such restraints. Similarly, on the demand side - there's folks that would be induced to sell their foreign assets at a higher price if it was allowed.

So essentially, there's a "you can use this to avoid capital controls on your Renminbi" premium on all sorts of things. Real estate in Vancouver. Cryptocurrencies. Chinese companies acquiring foreign subsidiaries with no real business purpose behind it.

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

#74

Post by dharma1 »

gcp wrote: post #66
dharma1 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 v…

The tokens only have value because people speculate on them This is a bit weirdly stated for this case, I believe. The Brave tokens have value because they offer advertising space in the browser. You're speculating on the value of that advertising space, not so much on an altcoin/token itself.

Yep, as I said some tokens have smart contracts to distribute revenue - I don't know enough about Brave to say whether that's in effect immediately or something they plan to do in the future.

BAT tokens are already tradable on exchanges, and currently trading at 3x ICO price. The pricing is primarily speculative

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

#75

Post by Cshelton »

DennisP wrote: post #62
wmf wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

To raise from the public under the JOBS Act, you have to do your ICO through a regulated platform. As far as I know, none of those support blockchain projects, so it's not actually an option yet. Plus you can't raise more than a million dollars or so that way. And there's a limit per person, so instead of just sending ETH, everybody would have to go through the platform's KYC, and declare how much income/assets they…

Also, to raise under the JOBS act, you pretty much have to do a full accounting audi to the same level as a publically traded company. And I think there is a limit of $50k for each person you raise from with a certain max in total raised. All in all, half of the money raised would go to paying for the funding to begin with, making it very very seldom used.

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

#76

Post by pacaro »

Sir_Cmpwn wrote: post #59
chongli wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Around the same time, I added a scripting language to a complex desktop app. My initial prototype just used SIOD [1], but my boss took one look at it and told me to think again, that our customers would never accept having to use a lisp to script the application. I ended up using the VARIANT type heavily (this was on win16), leaning on OLE automation, and building something with C syntax and modules. No first class functions, no prototype object model. :(

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

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

#77

Post by Veratyr »

hal9000xp wrote: post #55
Cshelton wrote: post #21

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…

I think something that makes even less sense is that in theory this is to protect people from making high risk investments yet there's nothing stopping any random person who cares to do so from opening an account with a brokerage and spending their life's savings on far out of the money call options.

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

#78

Post by maksimum »

Cshelton wrote: post #21

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…

> People are throwing their entire savings into this while not knowing anything about it besides everyone in the group hyping it up amongst themselves.

Yeah reading /r/ethtrader it's 95% hype and 5% caution. I keep feeling conflicted for not buying in at ~$120-$130, and every day I think about whether I should buy in. But then I try to answer the question "what about Ethereum makes me believe it will be worth more than $(today's price) a year from now?" and I can't come up with anything other than speculation... Any advice?

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

#80

Post by dang »

Sir_Cmpwn wrote: post #43

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".

Please don't.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14453783 and marked it off-topic.

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