Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by latchkey 1156 days ago
Terrible analogy. fentanyl requires a prescription to get access to it. There are well defined processes for this.

Until the SEC defines what sort of requirements there are to purchase crypto (like the FDA has [0]), coinbase isn't doing anything illegal by selling it.

[0] https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/drugsatfda_docs/label/2019/01...
1 comments
vkou 1156 days ago
There are well-defined processes for selling unregistered securities.

Either get them registered, or don't sell them.

link
latchkey 1155 days ago
No, there isn't.

https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2023/04/19/sec-chair-gensler...

link
vkou 1155 days ago
That has nothing to do with what I said, or with why Coinbase is in hot water right now.

Eth might not be a security, and Coinbase would still be trading other unregistered securities.

It's telling that all their press releases don't actually address the problem.

(Also, it's not the exchange's responsibility to register securities, it's the issuer's.)

link
latchkey 1155 days ago
Part of the Wells Notice is around the Coinbase Earn stacking service, which is staking ETH. That's what the SEC is going after and which Gensler can't even answer is a security or not.
link
vkou 1155 days ago
ETH might not be a security, but staking ETH is almost definitely one.

Dollars and orange trees aren't securities, but as soon as I start 'staking' dollars and orange trees into financial instruments which earn rewards, it becomes a security.

Asking 'Is Eth a security?' is asking the wrong question. Asking 'Is <some particular use of Eth> a security?' is the right question. Gensler was in the process of giving such an answer, and was interrupted ~40 times in that four-minute clip. It's really quite embarrassing.

link
latchkey 1155 days ago
> ETH might not be a security, but staking ETH is almost definitely one.

Ok, so if ETH isn't a security and staking ETH is a security, then the SEC should be able to provide a registration service for that, right? That's the problem, they can't seem to manage to do that.

> Dollars and orange trees aren't securities, but as soon as I start 'staking' dollars and orange trees into financial instruments which earn rewards, it becomes a security.

Sorry, you lost me on that one.

> Gensler was in the process of giving such an answer, and was interrupted ~40 times in that four-minute clip.

He should have had a concise answer and acted a bit less flustered then. It was a yes/no question to a professional.

link