Re: I'm Tech-Impaired But in Charge of Spearheading Development of an Altcoin
I replied to you in the long thread about the Howey test.
Your reply:
Afaics, the Howey test only requires that investors had a reasonable cause to expect their gains would come from the efforts of some group or community. So if you are pitching your coin to investors, I think you will be culpable. Just being decentralized in terms of distribution of the coins (and not selling it directly) doesn't appear to be sufficient. The Supreme Court said it will look past any obfuscations and always at the underlying economic reality, meaning whether the investors were reasonably relying on the lead developer for their future returns.
says that you're either antsier or more prudent than I. You seem reluctant to accept that Howey requires that all four criteria be met, and even more reluctant to recognize the efficacy of a "best-efforts" defense. Did you read the link I supplied, or the Wikipedia article on Howey? W.J. Howey went out of his way to discourage independent action. By my lights, that's the complete opposite of the peer-to-peer foundations of cryptocurrency. As I noted, I'm no lawyer myself...but I fail to see why a best-efforts defense backed up by repeatedly and publicly encouraging independent entrepreneurial action won't hold up.
A capable lawyer could really drag out the case by slowly and emphatically introducing every individual exhortation by the dev (team) to build an independent service for the cryptocurrency - as Defense Exhibit A, B, C, and so on in a performance that would be a lot like a filibuster - and not stop introducing them until he runs out, or is shouted down by the judge (which would give him good grounds to "except" [i.e., indirectly object and give notice of a future appeal.]) or until the prosecutor agreed to stipulate that there's a pattern of exhortation that's the opposite of the pattern of W.J. Howey's exhortations. To mount a defense of this kind, all you need to do is be somewhat of a nag.
