Topic: All crypto with an IPO/ICO is trash - no exceptions. Just launch fairly. - page 3. (Read 3041 times)

lets for a moment talk about the (perhaps idealistic) world where p2p currency's are indifferent to regulation, in this world IPO/ICO are equally trash and should be avoided as they are against one of the main reasons p2p currency's should arise in the first place (but thats lost on the get rich quick crowd that now plagues this community).

I agree with this.

A fair launch should have at least 90 days notice including documentation on what your coin does that makes it worthwhile - no premine, no instamine.

Quark almost got it right but then I found out they had huge rewards at the beginning which gave extra rewards to the very earliest adopters, that wasn't a premine but same concept, and so I bailed on it. Now I realize there were other issues with it as well.

But anyway - yes, I want a fair launch which means time to look at what the coin does before the launch.

I doubt the SEC is going to give guidance here. We must keep in mind that they argued Bitcoin was effectively money in the Trendon Shavers' (pirateat40) case. I do not see how they can argue that a de-centralized (FinCEN definition) is a security. Who is the issuer of the said security? As for centralized virtual currencies I see an Administrator who is not registered as an MSB having serious problems first with FinCEN, In addition there may be problems with the SEC.  

Edit. If I feel a crypto currency is a centralized virtual currency as per FinCEN I avoid it, so I do not get to the point of evaluating if in addition there are also issues with the SEC.

Thanks for that link.  I think we are really lucky these rules are in place.  They are strikingly sane for a government agency, and make sense.  I hope that if the SEC is gonna make something similar, they come out with it sooner rather than later.  Modding several cryptocurrency subreddits makes me wonder if I am considered 'held to a higher standard' than an average buyer/seller of crypto, and some statement either way would be nice: "we don't care", "we intend to regulate this at some point, but are figuring out what we want to do", or "here is what we are considering implementing".  I'm sure some devs wonder the same thing.  
  
It's hard to remember, but back in 2011 (ish) there was a time when people didn't know if the US was gonna swoop in any day and outlaw all cryptocurrency.  The early adopters of Bitcoin didn't get rich without losing a few years off their life due to stress.

Yes, that is how I understand the guidance.

The word "pre-mined" was used in the Ripple case https://www.fincen.gov/news_room/nr/pdf/Ripple_Facts.pdf

Those rules are hard as fuck to understand, honestly.  But one thing that jumped out at me is the definition of 'administrator'.  Is someone who premines a currency and sells it off in an ICO/IPO an administrator by those definitions? 
 

A simple formula is to follow the FinCEN guidance. https://www.fincen.gov/statutes_regs/guidance/html/FIN-2013-G001.html
If
1) It is a centralized virtual currency
and
2) There is no MSB registration by the "Administrator" making the currency non-compliant
then
3) Run

I am tired of hearing about some promising new project, taking my valuable time to look up the [ANN] topic, dig around through lots of flashy graphics, only to find the topic creator going on and on about some elaborate and self-masturbatory IPO/ICO scheme.  The defenders of said crypto cry:


But the sad truth is that if your project really is as revolutionary as you claim, then it will organically grow to the point where just being a natural early adopter will make you fantastically wealthy.  Then when you 'make it' you will have the added bonus of not having your history tainted by some shady early investment scheme.  
  

I don't care.  With all due respect to Nick Szabo's genius, into the trash it goes.  They should have launched with a clean proof-of-work and a set in stone time for moving to proof-of-stake if they wanted to not have a joke distribution.  Maybe they will go to a jillion dollars per gas, but I won't own a single fart of it for the long haul.  That's not how you launch a world changing currency - that's how you design a scheme to get wealthy.  Crypto is supposed to actually mean something, and getting wealthy is just a side effect.
  
It especially irks me to see actually interesting and innovative projects like Iota's tangle fall victim to this IPO mess.  There are a lot better ways to handle an initial distribution, even for blockchains that technically require it.  The only exception to this rule is micro-premines solely for the purposes of technical testing (like Litecoin's 150 coin micro-premine).  
  
So this is my plea to you, the good programmers of tomorrow: Launch your blockchain with no premine or ICO, and make an honest go at it.  Maybe you fail, and that's ok.  At least your project will fail as an honest project remembered fondly by the community - not some shady pump and dump.