[root_axis]

I'm ambivalent. I think the SEC has done a passable job, all things considered. They have acted slowly but surely, without impulsivity, taking the time to understand the technology while applying a nuanced eye to the evolution and growing sophistication of this shady ecosystem over the years. The SEC has gradually tightened the screws on the grift while not stifling the ecosystem that allows the credulous true believer to pay for their webhosting with bitcoin. Today with the benefits of hindsight from living in a world with billions of dollars in stolen funds, ICO mania, NFT mania, celebrity pump & dumps, a ransomware explosion etc etc, it's easy to say "you should have prevented this", but like with any new technology, the government is gradually catching up. In many ways, the government is much farther behind with respect to other internet technologies, like social media for instance...

[addicted]

You don’t need to understand the technology to recognize the financial scams being run.

Offering 15-20% guaranteed rates of returns to unsophisticated lay people in times of historically low interest rates doesn’t require any technical knowledge to know it’s gonna fail and/or is a scam.

[ProllyInfamous]

>Offering 15-20% guaranteed ... return ... to ... lay people ... doesn’t require any technical knowledge to know it’s ... a scam.

AbsoLUTEly.

I have utilized bitcoin transactions since 2012; I've never really cared for "altcoins," and was on the "losing side" of the Aug2017 hard-fork (BTC/BCH). Your majority crypto asset should be bitcoin, alone (at least 80%+).

Ethereum's decision to go "proof of stake" will lead to an "inverted parabola" (i.e. short-term increase, long-term destruction) of the ETH.marketcap, IMHO.

Any stablecoin (or fedcoin) should be met with Mark K's excellent question: "Do you REALLY NEED A BLOCKCHAIN to implement your idea?" If your idea does not require/MANDATE "de-centralization" as a fundamental core operating principle, USE A DATABASE INSTEAD of a blockchain (hint hint US Fed flirting with digital dollars).

Some of the few things which make bitcoin (alone) so special/unique (IMHO): 1) Founder effect 2) Limited supply of ~21m (†) 3) Simplicity of transactions

†): For the purests: yes, technically if 100% of nodes agreed then supply issuance COULD change (but realistically this would result in yet another hard-fork).

I maintain approximately 1/6th my wealth in bitcoin; I have now been through nine "crashes" (of the bitcoin environment) and only recently began diversifying outside of crypto.

[TomSwirly]

> They have acted slowly but surely, without impulsivity, taking the time to understand the technology

This must be a joke... right?

They've had fourteen years to understand the technology. But more, if they didn't understand this, it was their responsibility to not allow it to happen until they did.

The SEC has an active responsibility to proactively prevent fraud and financial panics. By allowing unregistered, unregulated, unaudited securities to proliferate for 14 years while they apparently did or said nothing, they have allowed this to become a trillion dollar problem. If a conventional investment bank had done anything like this, the SEC would not have allowed this, but they dropped the ball utterly and completely here.

[Georgelemental]

> But more, if they didn't understand this, it was their responsibility to not allow it to happen until they did.

"Everything not explicitly permitted is forbidden" seems like a uniquely terrible legal precedent to set.

[danaris]

There's a difference between applying this in the general case, and applying it in finance, where letting something go unregulated just because it's new is nearly guaranteed to result in rampant scams and people losing their life savings to the unscrupulous who misrepresented their offerings.