Quote from: eca.sh on May 19, 2016, 01:57:23 PM

Quote from: eca.sh on May 19, 2016, 11:45:00 AM

Quote from: ArticMine on May 17, 2016, 03:34:00 PM

In the United States I would take this guidance from FinCEN under consideration. https://www.fincen.gov/statutes_regs/guidance/html/FIN-2013-G001.html

It appears to me that an ICO would require the registration of the issuer with FinCEN as an MSB within the required time period in order for the ICO to be legal in the United States.

Edit 1: Here is the FinCEN Enforcement action against Ripple over this issue https://www.fincen.gov/news_room/nr/html/20150505.html

Edit 2: The above is the reason I stay well away from ICO coins including Ethereum.

Administrator classification didn't apply to Ripple because it lacked both token issuance and withdrawal from circulation; yet as an exchanger, it controlled the transfer of issuance.

ArticMine do you agree that the exchanger classification doesn't apply if the issuance, transfer, and token supply are controlled by decentralized version control open-sourced, decentralized protocol? The owners of the tokens have the power to change the protocol and use their tokens on their own fork.

FinCEN thrice reiterated the bit about users, exchangers, and administrators.

ICOs and premines are exchangers because there is central control over the token sales.

If the decentralized protocol controlled issuance of the DAO bypasses exchanger classification, whether a DAO bypasses SEC jurisdiction hinges on whether voting isn't a decentralized process.

1) ArticMine I remember you and some others from Monero writing that Zcash's plan to fund their foundation from mining would cause the miners to be classified as exchangers.

Zcash's foundation will not be in control of the creation of each coinbase transaction in each newly mined block. That is to be an encoding in the open-source decentralized protocol. The protocol and the open source process is in control, not the foundation nor the miner.

I conclude Zcash's plan bypasses FinCEN guidance. Whether Zcash's plan bypasses SEC jurisdiction is unclear. 2) If investors of the Zcash token are basing their expectations of future gains on the future performance and control of the foundation and the Zcash corporation, then perhaps it can be construed that there is no decentralized open source process in play?

The introduction of a Zcash corporation which is the primary funding source for the developers working on the "open source" protocol seems to paint an impression of lack of decentralization. Even though the $74 million funded Blockstream corporation may be gaining dominance over the Bitcoin open source protocol, there has been protocol forking competition from Bitcoin Classic and XT.

1) Does that really matter? If the miners will be in China anyway who cares?

2) This seems clear that they will, because Zcash is cutting edge technology that no one else understands, the Zcash team is the only team on earth that will be able to develop it further.