Perhaps Iota folks may have started to morph the presentation of their endeavors to prospective "investors", because of this thread I did on the legality of selling unregistered shares to investors:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1218399.0In any case, I do not take sides on this issue. I am not making any accusations of bad intentions nor intentional fraud.
If they have already raised money in the form of shares (and I have no position about whether that claim is true or not because I don't know), I will just note that per my thread above, it is seems impossible for them to now claim they are not offering an investment and have it stand up as a valid argument in a court of law w.r.t. to (at least USA) securities law.
Not at all. This is standard software sale, same way Ethereum, Augur, Gems, Voxelus etc. does it. You need to understand that this guy is a troll, he was banned for stalking, false accusations and death threats on nxtforum the day before.
Seems all of you need to read my linked thread more carefully. Saying that "it is not an investment" doesn't make it so. The legal criteria are covered in great detail in my linked thread.
Again this doesn't mean I am accusing anyone of fraud or bad intentions. I am not taking sides on that concern. Rather I am just pointing out that every single cryptocurrency that is marketed to speculators, is an investment, regardless of any disclaimers issued. Study the law. Delusion won't help you in a court-of-law (even if it is not a kangaroo court).
I'm not catching you on any word, I'm looking at the dictionary definition and silly claims that people who quite obviously "put (money) to use, by purchase or expenditure, in something offering potential profitable returns, as interest, income, or appreciation in value" are not investors. That's nonsensical.
I live in a country with high inflation. People buy a lot of USD to save their money. Are they investors?
W.r.t. to securities law (as I covered in my thread above), a government issued currency is not an unregistered security. But a private issued cryptocurrency always is, unless it was issued primarily to non-speculators (non-investors) for use as a currency token and not as an investment (e.g. a game currency given away from free and primary to participants of the game not to investors and speculators in the potential rise in value of the tokens).
You can't escape the intent of the securities law, which is to protect speculators and investors from "get rich quick" scams.
For example, americanpegasus argued that Aeon is not an unregistered investment security because it is issued by proof-of-work and no party received the proceeds. Yet if there is a community of speculators centered around the core developer (smooth) who are obviously by their forum posts involved for investment and thus this group is looked upon by investors as responsible for the future potential value, then this is an unregistered invesment security as defined by the Howey test. If rather Aeon was primarily distributed for free to n00bs who don't have a clue about investment and the primary use of the tokens is to spend them, then one could argue it is not an unregistered investment security under the Howey test.
Some people believe the USA securities law is not the model that applies globally, but I personally wouldn't risk that. The EU seems to be codifying the similar intent of the law. The globalization of the USA style hegemony is well underway.