BitShares Forum
Main => General Discussion => Topic started by: bitmeat on March 20, 2014, 04:37:19 pm
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Thats why AGS are donations and there is no legally binding contract.
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http://www.coindesk.com/sec-making-inquiries-mpex-satoshidice/
This is troublesome. I would like to hear objective arguments.
Hopefully Invictus is not going to get affected but this contradicts what we've heard before about SEC's stand on the issue.
They are not targeting it because it's gambling but because of how it was funded? And they are also going after the investors as well.
Fun times.
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The SEC has no authority over someone who isn't operating inside the USA. This looks like an intimidation tactic.
There might be a reason to have the investigation in the case of money laundering, theft, or something like that, but if it's because of a serious crime it should be the FBI or secret service asking questions and not the SEC.
A SEC representative sent an email request to MPEx operator Mircea Popescu of Romania. Popescu, known as ‘MP’ to the bitcoin community, is widely known for his outspokenness and offered a lengthy defence of bitcoin in his responses to the SEC’s request.
He was contacted by Daphna Waxman, an attorney with the Enforcement Division of the United States Securities and Exchange Commission, on 14th February with a request to release a list of all investors in SatoshiDice before its sale in July last year, and an account history for Erik Voorhees, the site’s original owner.
Jurisdiction issues
It is not clear if MPEx has broken any rules or even whether the US SEC has any official jurisdiction over a company based in Romania, as Popescu pointed out in the conversation. However it can certainly apply extrajudicial pressure, and Waxman requested he “voluntarily provide” the information instead. After denying Waxman a telephone conversation he wrote:
If you're not a US citizen there is no reason why you'd be obligated to help an investigation which has nothing to do with your jurisdiction. If the government wanted a list of investors as part of a money laundering investigation then a completely different set of agencies would be involved and it wouldn't be one rogue from the SEC.
Thats why AGS are donations and there is no legally binding contract.
Invictus might have to worry being on US soil but thats not the same as Mpex. Mpex has nothing to worry about because they aren't in the US. Romania is operating under a different jurisdiction.
Suppose a company formed in the USA which started off selling stocks in an over the counter market in virtual form, then they went public later on. If they gave everyone money who owned the virtual stocks but those people didn't get legally binding shares then it's not a contract bound by courts.
So I'm not sure what case the SEC would have even in the Satoshi dice instance because the people who owned the virtual shares in Satoshi dice never got real securities.
As far as we know, Angelshares are donations. They might be seen as a loan but not a security because we don't own stock in Invictus. We loaned Invictus money to build Bitshares and after it's built we get something else in exchange for it.
That is really no different from Kickstarter. You have businesses on there where people crowd fund by donating money to the business. It builds some product and then gives the product to the crowd, or it gives prizes, gifts, thank you notes, whatever. That is already legal in the USA which means what Mastercoin, Bitshares and others have done is legal.
The only area of confusion is perhaps the language Invictus was using and the fact that they aren't yet a non profit. If they become a non profit then our donations to them could even be tax exempt if it's set up right.
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Invictus is based in the US, is it not?
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Invictus is based in the USA but it's an assurance contract not a security.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assurance_contract
I'm not a lawyer so don't take me as an expert on the matters of the law. I think Bitshares is like any other product you crowdfund on Kickstarter.
Bitshares are not equity in Invictus. It's no different from if we went on Kickstarter and crowd funded an MMO and part of the rewards is that we'd x amount of virtual items in that game when the game is launched. Sure we could sell our virtual sword for real money after the game is launched, but its not the same thing as Invictus offering us equity stock in their company.
The only thing Invictus owes us is software development. We donated with the expectation that Bitshares XT and other DACs will be completed. They give us prizes to motivate us to help them build it in the form of reward points. Protoshares are functioning as reward points at this time and technically we are all volunteers.
Invictus needs to become a non profit so this can all be made legally clear. Additionally a possible side effect could be that our donations become tax deductible.
Think of Bitshares as a "serious game" developed by a non profit entity and a community of dedicated volunteers who participate in the game. It will not become more than a game until it's legally recognized and regulated, which will happen someday but hasn't happened yet and could take a few years.
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There is another possibility. Perhaps MPEX made the whole story up. How do we know the SEC email is real?
It would be in the financial interest of MPEX to create a fake dialogue with the SEC to get people to go to his particular exchange. If the SEC has literally no jurisdiction, and no law was broken that I can see, what are they investigating?
The whole thing seems a bit like a hoax to me.
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http://www.coindesk.com/sec-making-inquiries-mpex-satoshidice/
This is troublesome. I would like to hear objective arguments.
Hopefully Invictus is not going to get affected but this contradicts what we've heard before about SEC's stand on the issue.
They are not targeting it because it's gambling but because of how it was funded? And they are also going after the investors as well.
Fun times.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
The SEC has no authority over someone who isn't operating inside the USA. This looks like an intimidation tactic.
There might be a reason to have the investigation in the case of money laundering, theft, or something like that, but if it's because of a serious crime it should be the FBI or secret service asking questions and not the SEC.
A SEC representative sent an email request to MPEx operator Mircea Popescu of Romania. Popescu, known as ‘MP’ to the bitcoin community, is widely known for his outspokenness and offered a lengthy defence of bitcoin in his responses to the SEC’s request.
He was contacted by Daphna Waxman, an attorney with the Enforcement Division of the United States Securities and Exchange Commission, on 14th February with a request to release a list of all investors in SatoshiDice before its sale in July last year, and an account history for Erik Voorhees, the site’s original owner.
Jurisdiction issues
It is not clear if MPEx has broken any rules or even whether the US SEC has any official jurisdiction over a company based in Romania, as Popescu pointed out in the conversation. However it can certainly apply extrajudicial pressure, and Waxman requested he “voluntarily provide” the information instead. After denying Waxman a telephone conversation he wrote:
If you're not a US citizen there is no reason why you'd be obligated to help an investigation which has nothing to do with your jurisdiction. If the government wanted a list of investors as part of a money laundering investigation then a completely different set of agencies would be involved and it wouldn't be one rogue from the SEC.
Thats why AGS are donations and there is no legally binding contract.
Invictus might have to worry being on US soil but thats not the same as Mpex. Mpex has nothing to worry about because they aren't in the US. Romania is operating under a different jurisdiction.
The reason the SEC might get involved in this particular case involving Satoshi dice is because Satoshi dice went a step further and went public on the actual stock market rather than just keeping everything virtual.
Suppose a company formed in the USA which started off selling stocks in an over the counter market in virtual form, then they went public later on. If they gave everyone money who owned the virtual stocks but those people didn't get legally binding shares then it's not a contract bound by courts.
So I'm not sure what case the SEC would have even in the Satoshi dice instance because the people who owned the virtual shares in Satoshi dice never got real securities.
As far as we know, Angelshares are donations. They might be seen as a loan but not a security because we don't own stock in Invictus. We loaned Invictus money to build Bitshares and after it's built we get something else in exchange for it.
That is really no different from Kickstarter. You have businesses on there where people crowd fund by donating money to the business. It builds some product and then gives the product to the crowd, or it gives prizes, gifts, thank you notes, whatever. That is already legal in the USA which means what Mastercoin, Bitshares and others have done is legal.
The only area of confusion is perhaps the language Invictus was using and the fact that they aren't yet a non profit. If they become a non profit then our donations to them could even be tax exempt if it's set up right.
No way Invictus is gonna pay tax on AGS donations, are they?
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My conclusion is that if MPex isn't running a hoax, then it may represent a phishing attempt.
Hackers use these sorts of methods to elicit information by pretending to be legal authorities. Something about these emails stands out as seeming like a phishing attempt.
They are specifically asking to have names, addresses, BTC addresses of investors, and are focused on Erik Vorhees?
Anyone from the United States should know that the SEC isn't the agency to ask for this kind of specific information.
I see three primarily possibilities.
1. We have the possibility that a rogue SEC agent is on a fishing expedition targeting Satoshi dice and Erik Vorhees.
2. We also have the possibility that hackers are targeting yet another exchange with a highly targeted phishing attack on people they believe would have a lot of Bitcoins. MPex is known to be a place where you need a lot of Bitcoins to get in. Erik Vorhees is high profile and believed to have a lot of Bitcoins.
3. MPex is running a hoax to drive people to his exchange.
I think the first two possibilities are worrisome. I think the third possibility is easily ignored as childish.
If the SEC is targeting Satoshi dice in this way, it's likely a rogue SEC agent. The reason being that the Jobs Act actually legalizes crowd funding in the United States but has not yet taken effect due to the SEC itself delaying putting it into effect.
So if the SEC itself is delaying putting it into effect but at the same time has the money to prosecute Satoshi dice for crowd funding it makes the SEC as an institution look bad. If no investors were harmed, and there are no complaints, it makes them look tyrannical.
So the best course of action if it is true would be to protest against the SEC's actions so that it is known that this is not in the interest of protecting investors. And if it's something like a money laundering investigation then the wrong agency was sent to ask those questions.
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I'm just glad SEC is there to protect us. /end sarcasm
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I never count out the SEC. They consider almost anything a security. And they shoot first and ask questions later. Invictus needs to keep its hands very clean. From what I've read online from Dan and Stan, they have thoroughly vetted everything with lawyers, so I will trust in them.
Frankly, the e-mails that MP posted look phony to me. I think the site owners cooked that up or someone was toying with them because I've never seen a government request for private information that does not cite some legal basis of authority. If they're real, then it's a friendly fishing expedition, because if the SEC had any more jurisdiction than that, it wouldn't be so friendly.
Edit: It's either phony, phishing, or fishing.
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I never count out the SEC. They consider almost anything a security. And they shoot first and ask questions later. Invictus needs to keep its hands very clean. From what I've read online from Dan and Stan, they have thoroughly vetted everything with lawyers, so I will trust in them.
Do you remember where they said this?
And was something said about the progress or definite intent for Invictus to bcecome a non profit organisation?
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You'll have to look around for those comments on lawyers. But I have seen at least three references that I can remember. As far as Invictus' status as a corporation, I am only reporting what I have read and understood second hand, but my understanding is that it's not going to become nonprofit, but it is acting more as a facilitator for all these DACs by setting up the basic code and then seeking partners or developers to take on the activity itself.
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You'll have to look around for those comments on lawyers. But I have seen at least three references that I can remember. As far as Invictus' status as a corporation, I am only reporting what I have read and understood second hand, but my understanding is that it's not going to become nonprofit, but it is acting more as a facilitator for all these DACs by setting up the basic code and then seeking partners or developers to take on the activity itself.
+5%
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Is it possible to fund a project with kickstarter and guarantee e.g. 90 percent of the profits of the project to the supporters?
Can the supporters stay annonomous with kickstarter?
... that would be comparable to AGS to a certain degree.
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In this land of the free that I happen to live in, companies can be compelled to release any information on their clients. Whats more they can be prosecuted for letting their clients know that they have been forced to release this information.
This naturally has no bearing on a company based in Romania, other than what can be brought to bear in the form of local armed thugs with the conviction that they have a right to inflict violence. I'm not at all up to speed on the politics of Romania, but I'm pretty sure the USG hasn't started a drone campaign to eradicate the terrorist (anyone who disagrees with them) yet.
This may become an issue with any US based company like III though. I would suggest giving them as little actual information as possible for your protection as well as theirs. They can't be compelled to release information they don't have.
Perhaps a dead mans switch would work. Perhaps a post every day from III to the effect of "we have not been approached by armed thugs attempting to steal our data today" If a day goes by and you don't see that post then you might have something to worry about.
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In this land of the free that I happen to live in, companies can be compelled to release any information on their clients. Whats more they can be prosecuted for letting their clients know that they have been forced to release this information.
This naturally has no bearing on a company based in Romania, other than what can be brought to bear in the form of local armed thugs with the conviction that they have a right to inflict violence. I'm not at all up to speed on the politics of Romania, but I'm pretty sure the USG hasn't started a drone campaign to eradicate the terrorist (anyone who disagrees with them) yet.
This may become an issue with any US based company like III though. I would suggest giving them as little actual information as possible for your protection as well as theirs. They can't be compelled to release information they don't have.
Perhaps a dead mans switch would work. Perhaps a post every day from III to the effect of "we have not been approached by armed thugs attempting to steal our data today" If a day goes by and you don't see that post then you might have something to worry about.
That is paranoia you're displaying. Invictus does not own Bitshares. The shareholders own Bitshares.
That means the government will just approach each one of us directly if there is a problem.
And they'll find out who has Bitshares when you pay your capital gains taxes. So the best defense in my opinion is transparency.
Give the government everything you are legally required to give. Comply with the law only as far as you are legally required to. Don't interact with the government any more than you are legally required to and don't volunteer to help with investigations, it's not your job and you won't be rewarded for helping to put someone from the community in jail.
I think Invictus is as safe as any company on Kickstarter but I'm not a lawyer. I don't even know the tax implications of this yet.
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I note with admiration the personal honor and integrity of Ladar Levison of Lavabit.com (http://Lavabit.com).
We never want to let any single component of this industry get Too Big To Quit (TBTQ) nor advocate one chain to rule them all.
That way leads to the Dark Side.
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I note with admiration the personal honor and integrity of Ladar Levison of Lavabit.com (http://Lavabit.com).
We never want to let any single component of this industry get Too Big To Quit (TBTQ) nor advocate one chain to rule them all.
That way leads to the Dark Side.
Stan is obi won. Dan is Luke
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In this land of the free that I happen to live in, companies can be compelled to release any information on their clients. Whats more they can be prosecuted for letting their clients know that they have been forced to release this information.
This naturally has no bearing on a company based in Romania, other than what can be brought to bear in the form of local armed thugs with the conviction that they have a right to inflict violence. I'm not at all up to speed on the politics of Romania, but I'm pretty sure the USG hasn't started a drone campaign to eradicate the terrorist (anyone who disagrees with them) yet.
This may become an issue with any US based company like III though. I would suggest giving them as little actual information as possible for your protection as well as theirs. They can't be compelled to release information they don't have.
Perhaps a dead mans switch would work. Perhaps a post every day from III to the effect of "we have not been approached by armed thugs attempting to steal our data today" If a day goes by and you don't see that post then you might have something to worry about.
That is paranoia you're displaying. Invictus does not own Bitshares. The shareholders own Bitshares.
That means the government will just approach each one of us directly if there is a problem.
And they'll find out who has Bitshares when you pay your capital gains taxes. So the best defense in my opinion is transparency.
Give the government everything you are legally required to give. Comply with the law only as far as you are legally required to. Don't interact with the government any more than you are legally required to and don't volunteer to help with investigations, it's not your job and you won't be rewarded for helping to put someone from the community in jail.
I think Invictus is as safe as any company on Kickstarter but I'm not a lawyer. I don't even know the tax implications of this yet.
Paranoia? My accurate depiction of doing business in the US? My joking reference to drones in Romania?
My understanding of capital gains in that you are only required to report it when you cash out. I don't know about you but I have no intention of trading my BTS for USD.
Of course everyone should obey the armed thugs to the extent required to prevent them from being a victim of their state sanctioned violence. You should almost always do what the man with the gun to your head says.
Transparency? really buddy? I suggest everyone keep only the absolutely required records (perhaps legally required would be a better way of stating it)
Even what you have to keep, or your communication. Encrypt everything. I take great solace in the fact that if the bastards want to look at the baby pictures I send my family they are going to have to waste the time and money decrypting it.
Now of course I don't suggest anybody disobey the armed thugs, that would just be stupid. They have trained murderers on their payroll that honestly believe they have the right to kill you if you don't respect their authoritie, and I'm the sap that feels absolutely terrible if a possum or a bunny rabbit runs out in front of my car.
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Paranoia? My accurate depiction of doing business in the US? My joking reference to drones in Romania?
My understanding of capital gains in that you are only required to report it when you cash out. I don't know about you but I have no intention of trading my BTS for USD.
Please update your information. Capital gains have nothing to do with cashing out into USD. If you trade your Bitshares for anything, even if it's for Bitcoin, you must pay capital gains on every trade you make. If you spend Bitcoin after the price has gone up you must pay capital gains on that as well.
Transactions within the Bitshares network itself you don't pay capital gains on because those are all Bitshares and it's more like gambling. Instead it will be income taxes if you spend your BitUSD because that BitUSD did not come from the aether, it came from profit you made speculating within the Bitshares network.
Of course everyone should obey the armed thugs to the extent required to prevent them from being a victim of their state sanctioned violence. You should almost always do what the man with the gun to your head says.
Yeah, basically. I'm not saying I like the idea that we have to be taxed but it is what it is. Pay the man or else is the way the law is written.
Transparency? really buddy? I suggest everyone keep only the absolutely required records (perhaps legally required would be a better way of stating it)
The more transparency we have in terms of records and how Bitshares works as a network the less likely it is that Bitshares will be made illegal. The more likely it is we will be able to keep our profits and stay out of jail.
Even what you have to keep, or your communication. Encrypt everything. I take great solace in the fact that if the bastards want to look at the baby pictures I send my family they are going to have to waste the time and money decrypting it.
I agree with this. If you have sensitive information which does not belong to you then encrypt it. If it belongs to you and is valuable then encrypt it. That means encrypt your wallet and of course Keyhotee is something you might want to use.
Now of course I don't suggest anybody disobey the armed thugs, that would just be stupid. They have trained murderers on their payroll that honestly believe they have the right to kill you if you don't respect their authoritie, and I'm the sap that feels absolutely terrible if a possum or a bunny rabbit runs out in front of my car.
If you want to keep your money and your freedom a compromise must be made. Paying taxes isn't that big of a deal. Of course it would be helpful if the IRS actually told the cryptocurrency community what taxes to pay.
It seems they are more interested in putting drug dealers and others in jail than helping people to pay their taxes. I say the same about the SEC which would rather go after Satoshi dice than finalize their crowd funding legislation?
If the SEC wanted people to obey the law they'd finalize the law so people can abide by it rather than keep everything in a grey area. If the IRS wanted everyone to pay taxes they would give some guidance so there is no confusion.
When everyone must hire a lawyer just to use Bitcoin that is good for lawyers because that is money out of our pocket, it's also good for accountants because we have to hire them, it's good for law enforcement because they can arrest us under any pretext.
But it does not keep investors safe. It does not actually encourage innovation or improve the economy to have contrived legal ambiguity.
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Wait, isn't the point of a DAC is that it's, you know, "distributed"? so that it can't be shutdown, and don't have to care about SEC or whatever government organization? Like if a country tried to shutdown Bitcoin, it would fail.
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Wait, isn't the point of a DAC is that it's, you know, "distributed"? so that it can't be shutdown, and don't have to care about SEC or whatever government organization? Like if a country tried to shutdown Bitcoin, it would fail.
I think strategically the way to really make the SEC not a concern is to design your DAC to be self regulating so that you don't need an external government regulator. You make the government regulations irrelevant and redundant rather than take an adversarial approach by creating DACs which do the job of the SEC better than the SEC.
I think one of the mistakes I see developers in the community making is they take the adversarial approach in many cases. The best approach is to show that DACs can protect investors better than the SEC. This would put the SEC in an impossible situation where the DAC is better at doing their job than they could be.
If we want Bitshares to become something serious then it has to be self regulated by the community. This means we must figure out ways to protect our investors from scams, to prevent fraud, to do KYC, etc.
To give an example of the sort of solutions we will need, take a look at BlockAuth
BlockAuth is a service that to meet the KYC & AML requirements needs of bitcoin sites, as well as a service that protects the privacy of the end users and provides a convenient accounting system for them. It also functions as a way to ensure that users on sites don't have multiple accounts to astroturf or to scam other users.
Our primary service offering is that we'll function as an OAUTH provider. All member sites have to do add a little snippet on their website and users can log in with BlockAuth just like how some sites let people login with their Google Account or Facebook Connect.
At a minimum, the member site will always get a user identifier that will always be unique for the relationship between that user and that site (sites can use this as the user identifier), and the Auth Score the user has. Other information can be requested such as the users phone number, the complete or portions of the mailing address, email address, profile photo, links to social media, etc. The user ultimately has the choice to allow or disallow that information to be passed to the member site.
In order to build up their Auth Score, end users will go to our site to fill out their information. We perform KYC checks on everything and provide encouragement to the users to verify more and more to increase their Auth Score.
https://github.com/DeftNerd/BlockAuth
Software can eventually replace the function of the SEC. In fact, the function of the SEC could become a DAC and then you don't have to deal with all the unfair application of the law and potential for corruption within the SEC.
The SEC exists to provide a service, if it's possible to turn that service into a DAC then that is what we should do in parallel while we make the claim that Bitshares should not be regulated.
Let's not make the same mistake that Bitcoin developers made.
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This is not to say we wont need law enforcement, it's just to say that the SEC does not understand this technology and does not have the knowledge to regulate it.
Law enforcement will still be required to go after thieves, scam artists and others who are flagged by the community. No software is going to make an arrest even if the investigation could be crowd sourced, even if the software could make fraud easier to detect.
The role of the SEC:
Protect investors
Maintain fair, orderly, and efficient markets
Facilitate capital formation
http://www.investor.gov/introduction-markets/role-sec
At the moment the Bitcoin community is able to do everything except protect investors. We can do a lot better job at protecting investors and we must if we want to be taken seriously.
But we have to define some principles as to what protecting the investor means and then abide by our own principles by putting it into our software design. This has to be a global effort, so we need a way to vote or obtain a global consensus on certain priorities.
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A DAC makes the need to arrest someone irrelevant and unnecessary, counter productive evennn.
(http://www.cartoonscrapbook.com/01pics-L/snagglepuss_L28.jpg)
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I could be wrong once again, but I'm pretty sure the purpose of the sec is the same as all regulatory agency's, to protect established organizations from competition through raising the cost of entry. Seems to me that they are doing exactly what they should to that effect.
Perhaps you meant to say "the stated purpose of the sec"
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(http://www.sportsgrid.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/SEC-628x353.jpg)