"It represents an ownership position in a publicly-traded corporation (via stock), a creditor relationship with a governmental body or a corporation (represented by owning that entity's bond), or rights to ownership as represented by an option."
"The term ‘‘security’’ means any note, stock, treasury
stock, security future, security-based swap, bond, debenture, evidence of indebtedness, certificate of interest or participation in any profit-sharing agreement, collateral-trust certificate, preorganization certificate or subscription, transferable share, investment contract, voting-trust certificate, certificate of deposit for a security, fractional undivided interest in oil, gas, or
other mineral rights, any put, call, straddle, option, or privilege on any security, certificate of deposit, or group or index of securities (including any interest therein or based on the value thereof), or any put, call, straddle, option, or privilege entered into on a national securities exchange relating to foreign currency, or, in general, any interest or instrument commonly known as a ‘‘security’’, or any certificate of interest or participation in, temporary or interim certificate for, receipt for, guarantee of, or warrant or right to subscribe to or purchase, any of the foregoing."
If I presell tickets to my music festival to a reseller who in turn profits in selling it to festival goers, you're basically saying my tickets were securities and need to be registered with the SEC. you see how crazy that sounds. :)
DAO tokens were obvious everything else is just a funny money commodity. Yes, some kid made a way to print your own money in under 30 secs. enjoy it!
I'm so torn. On one hand, I want you to be right, but on the other hand I would love to see the likes of Ticketmaster and StubHub going down in flames at the hands of the SEC.
Nah disagree. Most folks building on top of Ethereum are using token sales as a fundraising mechanism to bootstrap their projects, and these projects are raising $100ms of dollars.
The whole "but, but, these tokens have utility" will get old pretty quickly imo and you can see the signaling with sophisticated projects like Protocol Labs' filecoin offering going the Reg D route.
> Are its profits to come solely from the efforts of others?
I'd say by that standard many tokens do indeed count. Also from Investopedia, by the way. Among the things which count as securities are commodity future options, which I would say is about equivalent to most tokens currently on the market.
again, just because there's speculators on a secondary market buying and selling doesn't mean it's a security. a commodity future option is by default NOT the commodity. In the case of a token – you own the commodity and you have the right to use or sell to someone else – like a carton of milk.
The only difference here it took no cost to create the commodity which is why there exists a market to resell at unbelievable margins.
Exactly. move into your mother's house. become a 1099 contractor at $100/hr+. save, save, and save. a year later there's your bootstrap funds + credit cards, excess of 100K. Outsource design/dev if necessary, launch it, raise a large seed round/series A, valuation 4m+
You don't have to give away anything. be an entrepreneur.
I'm confused. What part of working for a year and saving up $100k ruins your chances of starting a company? Am I reading too much between the lines, or do I also need long hair and a full beard like Wozniak?
37signals started that way, for what it's worth. Not by living with their parents, of course; by bootstrapping a consultancy.
PlentyOfFish started that way.
Braintree started that way.
Come to think of it, so did Github.
And didn't Mailchimp bootstrap, too?
I think maybe the impedance mismatch here is that you assume I'm saying companies need to raise more than 120k to start. They don't, if they start out profitable. But that's not the normal YC startup strategy: those companies depend on the ability to run for a year, maybe many years, before generating profits. Against that strategy, 120k is not very meaningful. Which is why 'pg and now 'sama are always at pains to point out that people shouldn't apply "for the money".
If you can you should always bootstrap. I have started several companies over the years and everyone of them was bootstrapped. The process might be slower, but the advantages are so much greater retaining control.
if someone stole your idea. it wasn't a good idea. not to say you couldn't make you alot of money off of it, but really you came up with a predictable idea any analytical or entrepreneurial individual would derive given the context/problem. now it's a "lottery". who executes/implements the best increases the odds of winning. that'a crapshoot (oversimplification obviously...you get the point).
on the other-hand, truly good ideas are nearly irreproducible, because there is a probably a very small chance someone will see the vision in your way.
ideas are art. decent art is reproducible. good art is not.
I would agree with the fashion profiling argument, but I had a (black) friend arrested on his way to a job interview in a suit for switching subway cars. The only reason he switched the subway cars was due to a homeless person smelling up the car he was in. Pretty sure if he was a white male he would not have been arrested.
For switching subway cars? How's that a crime? He paid for the ride didn't he? Or do the people of color are still only allowed to ride in the back on the subway?
Time = Money only for ideas that are easily reproducible. if you truly found a niche it's nearly impossible for another business to execute it the same way.
Yes, because buying merch and donations are one-time deals. No one is buying the same shirt from their favorite band every month but they are sure listening to their music every month. And if the the lionshare of my own subscription is going to Lady Gaga just because she released a new album...well that makes no sense in any business.
guys, gals, ladies and gentlemen. The valuation is purely greed. A raw human emotion not governed my logic or common sense. There's no financial model that will be able to justify Snapchat at $3bln. So stop using logic to justify and/or invalidate viability of the business.
People are greedy, especially VCs. they inflate the valuation since you have Facebook ($114bln market cap) and other big Asian investors willing to pony up.
you really believe NYC is taking in more low income residents? Exactly where are they moving into? Remember, they destroyed a couple blocks of section 8 housing to build the new Brooklyn Nets arena.
Just read and stop hating. https://www.thestreet.com/investing/nasdaq-all-in-on-blockch...