
Former SEC Attorney Explains Which Ethereum ICOs Will Be Targeted with Action - endswapper
https://www.forbes.com/sites/ktorpey/2017/08/31/former-sec-attorney-explains-which-ethereum-icos-will-be-targeted-with-regulatory-action
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jjn2009
>In Morgan’s view, the key part of the Howey Test in terms of ICOs is whether
the expectation of profit relied on the effort of others

This makes sense and is precisely how its been done, nothing new here but..

>What [the SEC are] trying to do is decide whether the investors are really
passive investors or whether they’re actively involved in creating value

Is this to say that the decision to take action is based on perceived
investment opportunity rather than something that is explicitly sold as an
investment opportunity? This would be a quite dramatic change in the ICO
world.

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CryptoPunk
>Is this to say that the decision to take action is based on perceived
investment opportunity rather than something that is explicitly sold as an
investment opportunity?

I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice, but that is not my reading of
it. I believe he means that tokens for applications that gain value from the
activity of users, like Bitcoin or Ethereum, would fall outside the definition
of a security, while tokens of applications dependent mostly on the activity
of a management team to earn revenue, like the DAO vis-à-vis Slock.it - which
the SEC concluded was expected to manage the projects the DAO voted on - would
fall within the definition of a security.

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jjn2009
I see, that makes much more sense. I wasn't entirely sure what was meant by
that statement.

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Animats
So this guy thinks the SEC will act only for really blatant scams.

It's a great time to run a scam.

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dmitrygr

       In addition to complaints from disgruntled investors, Morgan pointed
      out that the SEC’s whistleblower program could be another source of
      an investigation. Through this program, whistleblowers are awarded a
      percentage of monetary remedies that are imposed and collected by the
      SEC if and when enforcement action takes place.
    
      According to Morgan, some bounties in the SEC’s whistleblower program
      have been worth tens of millions of dollars.
    
      “I wouldn’t be surprised, particularly given the difficult nature of
      enforcing the securities laws in this context, if an ICO case comes
      out of a whistleblower seeking a bounty,” said Morgan.
    
    

OH YEAH!

