Quote from: StanLarimer on January 11, 2016, 03:23:12 PM

We have consulted some of the biggest law firms in New York, Washington and Virginia.

Okay I read that very long document.

I am claiming you are bullshitting, because if you understood the following working paper, then you would understand it does not state that you no culpability under the Howey test. There is no way an attorney has advised you that you are not culpable.

What it says is that only in the case that non-tradeable tokens are issued for DAOs, does it appear to not be an investment security. Whereas, you guys issues tradeable tokens where there is an expectation of profit and the investors are depending on your development actions to generate the expected gains.

Get a real attorney to advise you and stop bullshitting.

Do you not realize what kind of serious trouble you could be in? Securities law is not a joke. There are many people in Federal prison for violating securities law.

Quote from: StanLarimer on January 11, 2016, 03:23:12 PM

I'll refer you to the following white paper.

Members of policy group Coin Center, law firm Perkins Coie as well as Harvard and MIT have released a new working paper that aims to illuminate legal questions surrounding the non-financial use of the bitcoin:

SWARM Working Paper Distributed Networks and the Law.

...and this higher level Coindesk article: Token Security Research Analyzes Blockchain US Law

These top tier firms explicitly considered Howie and what we and others are doing. Quoting from the above Working Paper:

Quote

The nomenclature of Distributed Organizations is derived from pre-existing work on these topics. The original concept, aDecentralized Autonomous Corporation (DAC),was coined by Daniel Larimer. The second permutation, Decentralized Autonomous Organization, (DAO) was coined by Vitalik Buterin. Contrary to the DAC concept , a DAO does not necessarily pursue its own profit and may represent some sort of collective or non-profit interest. The third phase, Distributed Collaborative Organizations, was created by Joel Dietz and refers to a specific type of DAO that provide sits members with a defined set of rights that may be programmatically ensured and linked to the existing legal system.

You did not quote any relevant text to our discussion, instead you hype Dan. The mention of Dan there is irrelevant to our discussion. Focus on the legalities of the Howey test.

Quote from: StanLarimer on January 11, 2016, 03:23:12 PM

Cryptonomex does not issue tokens or operate any blockchain.

Dan was involved in the issuance of the tokens. If by now you have created some legal structure to obfuscate the economic reality, the Howey test specifically said those obfuscations of form will be ignored and the economic reality will prevail.

Quote from: StanLarimer on January 11, 2016, 03:23:12 PM

We publish and maintain open source accounting software that others are free to use for public and private applications.

We also provide consulting services to help others develop public and private blockchains with all kinds of different specs for their own purposes. This is no different than companies that sell accounting software to banks and firms on wall street. It is those banks and firms that are regulated.

There are multiple independent software providers contributing to the body of open source software and multiple organizations using it for their own businesses. We do not restrict, nor are we able to control, what others do with that public domain software.

We scrupulously adhere to this bright line limitation to our activities.

People who use the public domain software are naturally presumed to comply with all applicable regulations in their various jurisdictions.

Daniel and you are promoting Bitshares 2.0 all over the place, such as even Let's Talk Bitcoin sitdowns.

The Howey test includes when the investors in the tokens are relying on the promotional efforts of others.

I can't believe you are this clueless.

I see you claim are not indemnifying others who build products on your system. And it appears you haven't even done your legal due diligence. I don't want to get involved in such a potential legal mess. If I am mistaken and you have an official legal document on your website which clarifies matters, then please enlighten me. Also seeing you reveal the name of a respected law firm would also add some credibility to your claims that you should not be subject to the Howey test. I assume you won't lie about that, because I believe that could be illegal to claim you've been advised by a specific legal firm when you haven't.