[legitster]

... which would require ditching all of their customers and establishing a brokerage. We're talking about a fundamentally different business that is not distinguishable from any existing business. Coinbase as we know it would be dead.

[danaris]

And what's the fundamental problem with that?

No business has an inalienable right to government support or sanction for their business model, least of all when their business is 100% in an area that is brand-new, poorly-understood, poorly-regulated, and absolutely rife with scams.

[legitster]

Sure, but I don't think it should be the government's prerogative to shut down businesses either, just on the grounds that regulators find the industry annoying. If people want to buy their silly crypto trinkets I don't see how moving it behind the curtain of a brokerage actually helps anyone.

I mean, the whole SEC thing is a bit of theater: they can't actually do anything to protect against frauds and scams and bad investments. All they can do is to push assets into the high-speed traffic of professional traders and hope that the market sorts things out for itself.

[danaris]

"Find the industry annoying" is an interesting way to characterize a regulatory agency that has investigated a situation and determined that it breaks the law.

[legitster]

Uh, that's not at all how I would characterize the situation. There was no real investigation - the determination that crypto assets are securities is really a philosophical one. Like a court determining whether a tomato is a fruit or a vegetable.

And again, the implication here is that anyone buying and selling a crypto asset outside of a brokerage is breaking the law. According to the grounds the SEC is using here, if I wanted your Dogecoin there would be no legal way for us to transfer it without involving a brokerage firm.

[danaris]

> There was no real investigation

Do you know this? Because I haven't seen anything one way or another.

If the SEC did an extensive months-long project researching the cryptocurrency space, the philosophy and technology behind it, and how it's used in practice, why would that necessarily be something that was made public? Seems to me that sort of thing is just doing their jobs, and not something they would need to loudly announce.

As for the specifics...I don't pretend to understand the relevant laws well enough myself to state with any confidence what the SEC does or doesn't hold to be illegal, except for one thing: whatever it is Coinbase is doing, which they clearly think is illegal. You're the one making bold broad claims, with very little evidence, about what the SEC is or isn't doing—and these claims seem very much slanted to paint the SEC as being in the wrong.

So, again: Do you know what the SEC has and hasn't done here? If so, then please share with us, as that would be very relevant information to this discussion as a whole.

[Fatnino]

Like when the government shut down a startup by some guy named Ross who was just trying to make a buck on the internet with his unregulated pharmacy. What a travesty.

/s