“But the SEC let us go public” and other flawed arguments in Coinbase's defense

Re:“But the SEC let us go public” and other flawed arguments... by georgeecollins on Monday June 12, 2023 @07:37PM (#36302984)

Rather that claim knowledge, I would suggest you read Matt Levine's newsletter on this. He is a former securities lawyer who is extremely knowledgeable. -- I mean very extremely, he wrote an entire Business Week magazine about it.

Some key takeaways: For historical reasons as well as practical ones (who would you sue) BTC and ETH are probably considered commodities. Most of the rest are very similar to ICOs which were securities and rife with fraud. But you can't really go after the issuers very easily for a lot of reasons. But there are two parts to the SECs laws. One part is the issuance of secuirties, the second part is the brokers (or in this case exchanges). FTX, Binance, Coinbase, do things that would be illegal to do with securities (conflicts, lack of disclosure etc.). The SEC is just pointing out that most coins are securities and what they are doing is illegal under current law.

https://news.bloomberglaw.com/mergers-and-acquisitions/matt-...

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Re:“But the SEC let us go public” and other flawed arguments... by H8crilA on Tuesday June 13, 2023 @04:41AM (#36307384)

On top of that it is very, very hard to not see staking as unregistered securities offering. It is so bad that many states issued an immediate cease and desist letters, as well as awarded fines per violation, that is per investor.

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Re:“But the SEC let us go public” and other flawed arguments... by lclc on Tuesday June 13, 2023 @08:49AM (#36309489)

For ETH they can sue Vitalik Buterin, the rest of the Ethereum Co-Founders, and the Ethereum foundation. They are the issuers and majority of the ETH supply is there since the beginning.

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Re:“But the SEC let us go public” and other flawed arguments... by cliftonk on Tuesday June 13, 2023 @09:37AM (#36310048)

vitalik and the ethereum foundation hold less than 0.5% of the eth supply.

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Re:“But the SEC let us go public” and other flawed arguments... by ceejayoz on Tuesday June 13, 2023 @09:50AM (#36310222)

"Your Honor, I didn't murder the victim today, just a few years ago. Surely that doesn't count?"

They crowdfunded $18M and used that to develop and issue tokens. It was clearly under their control at the time.

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Re:“But the SEC let us go public” and other flawed arguments... by kjs3 on Tuesday June 13, 2023 @11:05AM (#36311305)

"Thou hast committed..." "Fornication? But that was in another country, and besides, the wench is dead."

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Re:“But the SEC let us go public” and other flawed arguments... by georgeecollins on Tuesday June 13, 2023 @03:27PM (#36315595)

Maybe they will. I don't know anything Buterin. But it seems like whoever created bitcoin was sincerely trying to make an independent token for exchange or a digital commodity. Many of the subsequent versions of crypto behave exactly like fraudulent securities, with hype, poor disclosure, wash trading and pump and dump. It makes sense to go after the predatory things first and cut some slack to things that were well intended.

Again, I don't know anything about the creators of ETH, but they may have a better defense of their actions then-- say -- Sam Bankman Freid.

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