Despite what a crypto telegram group may suggest, the SEC does more than just run the so called 'Howey Test'.

Honestly I dont know what tether fan boys are so scared of, unless they know it is a scam - a regulator and/or court approval is what they should want, it is what everyone should want. If you believe in crypto you have to campaign for it to be properly classified, that will be they turning point.

As for the 'expectations of profits' zero coupon bonds look identical, collateralised debt obligations on zero yeilding instruments looks identical, USD deposits look identical and JC penny gift cards look identical to tether. Additionally tether can be bought and sold for profit, I personally have done it 1,000s of times.

>C. Reasonable Expectation of Profits Derived from Efforts of Others

There is no expectation of profits from Tether tokens. In fact, you are guaranteed to lose money to inflation even if everything works out perfectly.

I would encourage you to reconsider your assumption that someone commenting about the Howey test needs you to explain what it is to them. It’s very thoughtful of you to offer that PDF, but offer it with less “you obviously don’t know what you’re talking about” condescension next time, please.

(I am not your lawyer, this is not legal advice, etc.)

But according to google trends nobody ever googles this, and most results appear to be automatically generated SEO spam or not discussing tether as an investment.

>indicating that general public investors may well expect a profit from their investment in it.

Whether or not such an expectation is reasonable is highly relevant. There cannot possibly be any reasonable expectation of profit as USDT will never be redeemed at above 1 USD, you can only lose money.

You seem to be suggesting that unrelated third parties could turn USDT into a security by lying that it's a great investment. I do not think that's true, I think that's simply fraud perpetrated by the third parties. Some Indian SEO spammer can't possibly be the one to decide if USDT is a security or not.

> Get Rich Quick scam pages sway the general public so easily to invest in it, and why else would these pages exist at all?

This is not actually happening. You can find automatically generated SEO spam pages saying essentially anything, but according to Googles own stats this just isn't a real thing.

> An investment with no profit potential does not attract flies, and investment is not explicitly restricted to businesses that have fiduciary need to use Tether on behalf of non-investors.

You have made zero effort to show that there are actually reasonable people investing in tether with the expectation of earning a profit. So far there's no indication that they exist, it seems extremely unlikely that such a person could exist (they wouldn't be reasonable).

> It’s certainly enough for the SEC to bring it to trial.

The SEC can sue you for any bullshit reason, does not mean that their suit won't be immediately thrown out.

>It’s very thoughtful of you to offer that PDF, but offer it with less “you obviously don’t know what you’re talking about” condescension next time, please.

I had no intention of being condescending by linking that PDF. I had forgotten that it exists, and was happy to find it again as it provides what seems to be the clearest public framework for assessing these things.

I'll admit that I'm a little frustrated to see so many commentators here seemingly using their dislike of Tether to justify the kind of weird mental gymnastics required to argue that the SEC should go after Tether. The SEC is simply not the correct regulator for this, there's no indication that they might be.

I'd get it if there was case law to support some of these crazy interpretations of "expectation of profits", but there isn't.