BitUSD and the instruments traded on the BitShares network are not a SECURITY based upon the SEC chair's suggestion that the underlying virtual currency may not itself be a security. If this line of thinking holds then BitShares will be in a very good positon.
I am not a lawyer, but I
am an expert witness in financial cases. Much hinges on how one defines something in words, and not just which equation one uses to model it and which block of software one uses to encode that equation.
To see this in action, look at the case of
Bernard von NotHaus and compare it with R.A. Radford's (1945) "
The Economics Organization of a POW Camp" and
Ithaca Hours.
Whether it is an ounce of silver, a cigarette, or an hour of one's time, it can be used as money. However, NotHaus has been convicted of counterfeiting and declared a domestic terrorist in court, and the issuers of Ithaca Hours and prison inmates who continue to use cigarettes as money today have not.
One way of looking at BitUSD, for example, is to see it
not as a 1:1 proxy for a US dollar, but as the question, "How much do you believe a BitShare is worth in terms of USD?"