The SEC has charged two initial coin offerings with defrauding investors

Re:The SEC has charged two initial coin offerings with defra... by 1053r on Saturday September 30, 2017 @12:42PM (#15373677)

Please don't spread FUD. In the DAO guidance [1] you reference, the SEC explicitly calls Ethereum a virtual currency, and does not call it a security.

"From April 30, 2016 through May 28, 2016, The DAO offered and sold approximately 1.15 billion DAO Tokens in exchange for a total of approximately 12 million Ether (“ETH”), a virtual currency used on the Ethereum Blockchain."

They might change their mind on the matter, and expand their definition of virtual currency to be securities, but they went out of their way to publish a piece which references the word "Ethereum" 39 times, "Ether" 2 times, and "ETH" 15 times. None of those times do they refer to Ethereum as as security.

[1] - https://www.sec.gov/litigation/investreport/34-81207.pdf

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:The SEC has charged two initial coin offerings with defra... by Alex3917 on Saturday September 30, 2017 @12:46PM (#15373698)

Something can be a currency and still be a security, they are largely orthogonal concepts.

That's actually the entire point of the Howey test, which was established as part of a case to determine whether or not property that was classified as real estate could also be classified as a security.

[ Parent | on HN ]