
Better than free: A crypto business model for apps - jayzalowitz
https://hackernoon.com/better-than-free-the-new-business-model-for-apps-and-possibly-everything-else-a343e97ba706
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aqsheehy
Better than free: become an unlicensed securities vendor

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ohscarl
Actually it seems like using the tokens in the context presented would not
satisfy the Howey Test: "If, however, the investor's own actions largely
dictate whether an investment will be profitable, then that investment is
probably not a security."

[http://consumer.findlaw.com/securities-law/what-is-the-
howey...](http://consumer.findlaw.com/securities-law/what-is-the-howey-
test.html?version=2)

But at this point you would probably need to build some anti-speculative
functionality into your app anyways to prevent random "investors" from just
hodling your supply.

~~~
ringaroundthetx
It is more complicated than that, and the Howey Test isn't the only test to
subject you to federal and state securities laws.

Tokens have the capability of getting around those reguations.

Token issuers have a trickier road but it is possible to be compliant and not
have a security, or compliant and have a security.

Currently in 2017 there are no compliant, or liquid, exchanges where you can
trade tokens that are properly registered as securities. But this is not an
absolute, as broker-dealers like Etrade, NYSE can trade securities even if
they happen to be tokenized, they just aren't yet, but even when they will,
they will be too slow and uncompetitive to noncompliant exchanges due to all
the rule changes, and attitude changes necessary.

While existing decentralized exchanges obviously don't care whether the token
is classified as a security or not because it is impossible for them to
register as a broker dealer, and it is impossible for them to not facilitate
the trading of any particular token.

So currently, token offerings simply don't register as securities because this
would hamper their liquidity.

It won't matter in the very near future, as decentralized exchanges and the
transmission functions, improve greatly, while centralized exchanges simply
also become properly registered or legacy ones upgrade to trading tokenized
securities. All while it is still possible for the issuers to be compliant
with non-securities tokens.

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choxi
Has anyone built a forum like HN or Reddit on top of Ethereum yet? It would be
a really interesting experiment to have a decentralized forum where upvotes
earn tokens.

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CryptoPunk
The closest thing is Leeroy:

[https://leeroy.io/i/feature](https://leeroy.io/i/feature)

But social applications are prohibitively expensive right now. Unless
something like Plasma (Ethereum sub-chains) becomes a reality, Ethereum will
only be useful for financial/authentication applications I think.

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joaoperibeiro
Nice one!

