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US SEC sues Coinbase, one day after suing Binance

reuters.com

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Re: US SEC sues Coinbase, one day after suing Binance

#91
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When was ETH declared as not a security? I don't remember hearing anything about that. The SEC says only BTC is a commodity: https://www.axios.com/2022/06/28/bitcoin-is-the-only-coin-th... The CFTC says only BTC is a commodity: https://cryptoslate.com/cftc-chair-rostin-behnam-snubs-ether... People keep saying that regulation is unclear, when let's be honest, it's perfectly clear. Just not what a lot of people wanted…

The fact that they have been asked, point blank, by congress, "is ETH a security?" and the SEC wouldn't answer is pretty fair for claiming "not perfectly clear." Even here, it wasn't all of ETH that is under question. So, if you have bought some ETH from coinbase, it isn't under fire here. If you paid them to stake your ETH, it is. It is unclear, to me, what it would mean for any ETH you staked personally.

I've watched that interview, congress would ask a loaded question, framed in a fallacy[1], the chair would start answering it, and the congresscritter would interrupt him and throw a tantrum. Repeat 5x.

It wasn't a good look. For the congresscritter.

(I wonder how much money he's gotten from Sam, CZ, and Coinbase...)

[1] The fallacy in question is the congresscritter's claim[2] that a security can't also be a commodity. This is trivially disprovable by a simple example - an isolated company town using scrip, where the scrip also happens to be company stock.

[2] Whenever the chair would start responding to the fallacy, the congresscritter shouts over him, because if he doesn't, his argument-in-the-form-of-a-question falls to pieces.

Re: US SEC sues Coinbase, one day after suing Binance

#92
post #48

If you look up the definitions of "security", "financial instrument", "commodity", and "currency", it is pretty clear that a plain vanilla crypto-currency like Bitcoin is no ordinary security nor a financial instrument. It is not a claim on something else, even less so than a traditional bank note. It is more like a commodity. Since when is "aluminum" a security? A crypto currency business however may be engaged in t…

Getting sued to fall under govt regulation - and therefore gaining imprimatur - seems like exactly what these exchanges should want. We never regulated Beanie Babies.

[dead]

Re: US SEC sues Coinbase, one day after suing Binance

#93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh? BTC is up 56% YTD, QQQ is up 34.5%. Over five years BTC is up 300%, QQQ is 100%. Over life BTC is 7850% while QQQ is 570%. Today QQQ is up 0.12%, BTC is up 0.95%. I don’t know which slice you want to compare but general holds of BTC have outperformed QQQ significantly, even today it’s done better while it’s two largest exchanges have been sued by the SEC.

bitcoin peaked at 20k in 2017. it is only up 30 percent to 26k. QQQ is up a lot more. over 5.5 years of weak performance. The major problem with bitcoin are the huge declines like in 2018 and 2022. It stopped going up as much anymore either like it did in 2013 or 2017.

This reminds me of those "biggest X since Y" headlines. No matter how insignificant the event, you can always write a clickbait-y title.

Re: US SEC sues Coinbase, one day after suing Binance

#94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If my personal social circle is showing huge losses in these companies, I have to imagine that other people out there have similar experiences. This is a personal bias. I've made $86,000 trading Ethereum. My brother-in-law made $24,000 trading Bitcoin. My reality is different from your reality ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I can't speak for Celsius, Voyager, and FTX. If there was a scam, it has to be punished. No questions asked. But…

> I've made $86,000 trading Ethereum That's not the problem. The problem is that companies like Celsius, FTX, and Voyager are disappearing and collapsing. Binance and Coinbase are two other companies that could just randomly disappear because of how incredibly sketchy their products are (especially "Earn" or "Staking" products). I'm pointing out companies that collapse (taking literally Billions of American money awa…

Dude, I made that comment in response to your "My coworker lost $X0,000 over Celsius" to highlight the fact that not everyone's circle is losing money.

> Coinbase is doing the same thing as Celsius, Voyager, and FTX with their Earn / Staking products. And now the SEC is suing them over it.

Why can't SEC work with Coinbase before suing them? Again, Coinbase has been seeking help from SEC for years. Brian Armstrong, the CEO of Coinbase, talked about this so many times. They are trying to work with the regulators, but the problem is that the regulators lack expertise dealing with these new asset types.

Re: US SEC sues Coinbase, one day after suing Binance

#95
post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mad because some entrepreneurs makes the effort to build legitimate business entities, and what certain governments find to do is any scheme to keep them out of legitimity. Not that crypto fans would care all that much about these businesses, but there is a need to onramp and offramp given transactions are made in their vast majority in fiat. An exchange run as a business having at least a lot at stake in ensuring co…

> Mad because some entrepreneurs makes the effort to build legitimate business entities, and what certain governments find to do is any scheme to keep them out of legitimity. This isn't what it looks like to me. It looks to me like the entire point of cyptocurrency was to complete route around regulations that these people thought were too onerous. That's not building a "legitimate" business, that's taking a risk and…

Exactly this! For whatever reason I have this image of guy in a wetsuit and surfboard looking at a big wave coming in and being like "whoa, what's this? how dare it!"

Re: US SEC sues Coinbase, one day after suing Binance

#96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I don't think any serious people in the world are considering the idea that the US would balance their reserves against cryptocurrency.

So 1- I was not referring to cryptocurrencies, crypto market is way too small anyway 2- I'm referring to every country except the US, obviously...

From Middle East to China or even Japan, every country is reducing their global reserves in dollars, and diversifying in other (national) currencies. Also, many countries are trying to conduct trades in other currencies than the US dollar.

Basically, I'm just referring to the decline of the US dollar and that's welcome for everybody except maybe for the US government.

https://wolfstreet.com/2023/04/02/status-of-us-dollar-as-glo...

Re: US SEC sues Coinbase, one day after suing Binance

#97
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's odd. All these years I thought I was exchanging dollars for Bitcoin for spending it. Thanks for setting me straight.

I know lots of people that own bitcoin. I haven't met anybody that uses bitcoin to spend it on anything. It still makes front page news on reddit if someone does groceries with crypto: https://old.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/13a9q3r/yes... People write articles if a house gets sold with bitcoin: https://finbold.com/house-in-portugal-sold-for-3-bitcoins-in... Spending bitcoin on "stuff" basically doesn't exis…

As a vendor that tried accepting crypto I can confirm that it's basically non-existent. And the few transactions that do take place have a lot more issues than regular payments: https://blog.shodan.io/accepting-crypto-a-vendor-perspective...

Re: US SEC sues Coinbase, one day after suing Binance

#99
post #48

If you look up the definitions of "security", "financial instrument", "commodity", and "currency", it is pretty clear that a plain vanilla crypto-currency like Bitcoin is no ordinary security nor a financial instrument. It is not a claim on something else, even less so than a traditional bank note. It is more like a commodity. Since when is "aluminum" a security? A crypto currency business however may be engaged in t…

[deleted]

Re: US SEC sues Coinbase, one day after suing Binance

#100
post #15
post #2

Crypto companies think they don't trade securities which is clearly wrong and contradicted by their own advertising. People buy crypto without a real use for crypto because they think they can sell it for more later. Everyone under the sun knows this. It's obviously a security and failing to register should be met by SEC cases like this one.

What's the use of crypto again? Because I think it's kinda useless. Just like NFT's

Giving individuals the power to be their own banks is not useless. Unpractical maybe, but not useless.
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