[joefigura]

It doesn't seem like the SEC has actually said what Coinbase is doing that is a security, or published regulations on how to determine which digital assets are securities and which are not

"The SEC staff told us they have identified potential violations of securities law, but little more. We asked the SEC specifically to identify which assets on our platforms they believe may be securities, and they declined to do so"

- https://www.coinbase.com/blog/we-asked-the-sec-for-reasonabl...

Coinbase seems to be trying their best to comply with regulation, but getting nowhere

[pavlov]

Regulations and court precedents about what’s a security have been published since the 1930s. Lots of people have tried to work around it. Crypto isn’t the first attempt to create pseudo-securities where the layers of ownership and control are obfuscated. The rules aren’t really that complicated — it’s just that crypto people have a hard time facing the fact that practically everything in crypto meets the definition of a security.

Coinbase’s lawyers are paid to come up with a paradigm where the tokens on their platform can continue to be sold to retail with the implied benefits of a security (“buy token X and the awesome work of our team will make you money!”) while hopefully skirting the regulations. The SEC’s lawyers’ job is not to help them craft that.

It’s not like you can go to the police to repeatedly ask if your scheme to avoid the law is going to work this time. The IRS doesn’t offer that kind of tax avoidance planning feedback service either. If that’s what your business needs to operate, you’ll just have to trust your own lawyer about their interpretation of the law and why it doesn’t apply to you.

[jefftk]

The IRS gives lots of detailed guidance [1] on how to file your taxes, including specifically for cryptocurrency [2]. The SEC has given very little guidance here, mostly just repeating their normal non-cryptocurrency guidance in a way that wouldn't be informative to a securities lawyer [3], and especially hasn't addressed the way their current rules are incompatible with crypto. That Etherium, for example, has existed for a decade and become as big as it is without the SEC deciding whether it's a security makes it very hard for anyone to plan.

(I don't own any crypto and haven't ever; generally anti-crypto.)

[1] https://www.irs.gov/publications

[2] https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self-employe...

[3] https://www.sec.gov/files/dlt-framework.pdf

[_fizz_buzz_]

> It doesn't seem like the SEC has actually said what Coinbase is doing that is a security

According to Coinbase…

[beaned]

How can you possibly be a fair "enforcer" of a law that you refuse to specify?

[Kye]

Law in the US is made by Congress. Federal agencies are given a fair amount of latitude in executing that law, but they're still bound by it. They can offer guidance as best as they can when Congress is slow to act, but that's about it. At the end of the day, they still have to convince a prosecutor if they want to make a federal case out of it.