Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by arcticbull 1881 days ago
Totally. That would be the Securities Act of 1933, the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, and 18 U.S. Code Sections 371, 1341, 1343, 1348, and 1349. I’ll leave it as an exercise for you if you’d like to read the full text but an analysis is available as [1].

There’s a reason Tim Cook isn’t out on Twitter shilling the companies Apple has invested in while selling their shares. I’m led to believe Club Fed isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

[1] https://www.criminallawyergroup.com/practice-areas/securitie...

1 comments

Did you read your own link? It about "pump and dump" schemes and explains that they are fundamentally about false positive statements.

"Generally, securities fraud occurs when someone makes a false or misleading positive statement about a company or the value of its stock, inducing others to make a financial decision based on that false statement."

This is Musk's exact defense - he very cleverly says nothing concretely positive about anything, and very specifically puts it in a public forum with Twitter.

It's quite brilliant, although maddening to folks with less of a stomach... which is why he's in the position he's in - he makes those grey-area decisions.

Where all of them add up in the future, only time will tell - but for now, results are squarely in his favor.

Cryptocurrency is not a stock and lots of people make predictions and bold statements about other things like gold and silver.

Nothing here would be significant if the other side of the equation wasn't people soaking up the slightest drip of nonsense and turning it into a frenzy of something they don't understand.

> Nothing here would be significant if the other side of the equation wasn't people soaking up the slightest drip of nonsense and turning it into a frenzy of something they don't understand.

But people do, and that's why we have laws against crooks and scams. Just because people are stupid, exploiting their stupidity doesn't make you less of a criminal.

In the case of crypto, the laws haven't caught up yet, and they need to do it fast.

Announcing that your company accepts a currency is not 'blatant and illegal market manipulation' or a pump and dump or a scam no matter how ridiculous people's reaction is.

No matter how upset you are, this is just a question of legality.

> Cryptocurrency is not a stock and lots of people make predictions and bold statements about other things like gold and silver.

Surely you have an example then of a publicly traded company picking up a pile of assets like gold or silver, talking them up on social media while selling them?

Would your blanket exception for crypto apply to security tokens or just utility tokens?

It’s interesting that you once again accuse people of not knowing what they’re talking about because they disagree with your opinions.

Your link stated that the core of securities fraud is about making false positive statements about a company or stock.

His statements were not false and not about a company or stock. It is debatable if they were even positive. Even your quote is only saying they wouldn't convert to USD and no time frame is given.

There is no "exception" here.

> It’s interesting that you once again accuse people of not knowing what they’re talking about because they disagree with your opinions.

This is a hallucination. I didn't accuse anyone of anything. I asked if you read your link since it directly contradicts what you are saying.

> His statements were not false and not about a company or stock. It is debatable if they were even positive.

Correct, it's not about a company or a stock, which is something I led with in my initial reply ("In any other asset class this would be..." -- which I have since learned applies unevenly to security types although for the record I was talking about stock). I haven't said he committed a crime, and I do not believe he has committed a crime.

I think it's pretty distasteful however to take advantage of the crypto community he claims to champion. Your claim he's not actively working them into a froth is certainly at best a generous take. [1]

> ...not about a company or stock. > There is no "exception" here.

This I do not believe to be entirely true. Some of the rules I linked, specifically the Securities Exchange Act, are written to apply to securities, not stock (which are of course a sub-type of security). I believe, and IANAL so this should be taken with a grain of salt, that security tokens should be covered by at least that law.

How about cryptos that represent stock, like the Tesla-stock backed coin Binance launched? That might just be a job for a judge to sort out.

> This is a hallucination. I didn't accuse anyone of anything.

I was making reference to past times you've specifically accused me of not understanding crypto. With that in mind, I read "nothing here would be significant if the other side of the equation wasn't people soaking up the slightest drip of nonsense and turning it into a frenzy of something they don't understand" as referring to me. If it did not, I apologize for misreading.

However, your characterization is once again neither charitable, nor particularly civil.

[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/ronshevlin/2021/02/21/how-elon-...

Read this re full self driving: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26519357

I've never seen a more blatant example of securities fraud than that. And yet he gets away with it over and over. Year after year.

Where's my full-self-driving taxi? I want to buy one and rent it out and get rich! /s

And for comic relief, see the true state of FSD "beta". Be sure to watch the videos: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26519244