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21 sats \ 1 reply \ @mudbloodvonfrei 7 Jun 2023 \ parent \ on: Nic Carter On Bitcoin Maxis and Religion bitcoin
Truth is, I didn't read the lawsuit so I might be missing something important.
I'm not hard core libertarian, so I am not opposed to all government intervention, but I think the bar needs to be high. Do I think shitcoins are a poor investment? Sure. Do I think they're all a priori fraudulent? No. Most are, but some aren't, and those are none of the government's business.
If someone is creating a fraudulent asset then the law should pursue that person/company/entity. It seems like overreach to go after a business that provides a platform for trading something, regardless of how I feel about that thing. Especially since there are p2p exchanges that "allow" the same activity if for no other reason than that they are difficult to shut down. It's like suing a farmer's market because some farmers are selling weed to consenting adults.
There are many things I find distasteful, but that's not a high-enough bar for me to prefer government intervention.
Please tell me what you think I got wrong though!
As I understand, scammers are as old as time itself. Years ago the government put in place certain “investor protection” laws that make it harder to scam people. A lot of this has to do with honest disclosure of how the “investment” works and ensures that customer/investor funds aren’t treated carelessly.
Some of these investments are called securities and are considered so if they pass the Howey Test - if there is an "investment of money in a common enterprise with a reasonable expectation of profits to be derived from the efforts of others."
It seems like the majority of crypto tokens were scams or poorly executed to ride the hype wave, and the rest were actually unregistered securities pretending to be new tech and competes with Bitcoin itself. A core team of developers worked on a private network whose goal was to return profits for early investors. That’s not illegal, but there are things you MUST disclose to your investors in order to prevent such abhorrent fraud as we’ve seen so much of à la FTX, et al.
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