another legal point is Atoms are not being traded.. they are auctioned... The Whales or Founders have no impact in the transaction and I don't recall any discussion on Atoms when in the private rooms on slack..
auctioning is trading.... its just a bid process with an initial price. thats like saying i didnt sell something on ebay i auctioned it.
its not a car i call it a mode of transport..... i didnt buy my food from the supermarket i swapped green notes for food. see how dumb it sounds?
I'm sure he's completely aware that auction is simply a different form of trading, it's just a rather hamfisted attempt to move the discussion away from the fact that regardless of it's legal status, there is still the possibility of manipulation by the whales.
Staying on track,....
Can you name a single cryptocurrency that is free from the possibility of manipulation by whales i.e. large stake holders
All cryptocurrencies are open to the possibility of this type of manipulation, if this is a red flag then why waste your time in the land of cryptocurrency.
Are all those other whales part of the development process and get advanced information from the coin team, like the ION whales get? Let's compare apples to apples here. Stop trying to generalize it. ION whales and other coins "whales" are two completely different things. A bitcoin whale own a bunch of bitcoin, not some fund raising off chain token that gives them priveledged information about the inner workings of what is going on. Nice attempt to discredit, but it isn't gonna work.
Remember, compare apples to apples. What other coins offer off chain tokens as fund raisers that creates a class system within the coins ecosystem, the same way ION? What other coin let's you purchase a bunch of worthless tokens to get the priveledge of advanced information that the regular peons don't get? And said tokens can magically multiply your staker rate. Or is this the great ION innovation we keep hearing about?