Quote from: chryspano on September 05, 2017, 09:59:16 PM

Quote from: Hyperme.sh on September 04, 2017, 09:56:12 PM

Whereas, for an instamine or stealth proof-of-work mining launch where a significant portion of the money supply is mined over a very short period of time mostly by the developers group (and their insider friends), theres no significant competition and thus the developers (and friends) mine the tokens at nearly zero cost (relatively speaking to the price they sell them for), and thus a very significant portion of the money supply has been effectively pre-mined at nearly zero cost by the developers who the investors expectation-of-profit depends on. Thus this is economically equivalent to an ICO and thus those tokens are effectively ICO-issued tokens under the Howey Tests criteria. This is what transpired for Dash, Steem, and Bytecoin. In Bytecoins case, the stealth mine may have been over a long period of time, because afaik it was not publicly announced for up to year from the date of the genesis block.

My only "objection" is that I don't think there was an "instamine" or "stealth proof-of-work mining" in Steem, there was the [ANN] thread, and there was the code available for everyone. No matter how much easy the mining process could have been, there would always be some people that could not mine at all. If we make the claim that Steem was "premined" because people could not mine it if they didn't have a degree in IT then we can also make the claim that most coins are also "premined" because they require at least some basic IT knowledge, lets also not forget those that don't even own a pc, everything must seem "premined" to them. What I'm trying to say is... where do we draw the red line when we talk about "premine" based on how "difficult" is something to mine?

Imo, it's too far fetched, that's all.

I agree that defendants can make arguments about subjectivity. Here is my logic.

Main objection (reply) to your point is the one @smooth stated, which I reiterated.

Its the duration of the mining phase that most distinguishes a competitive proof-of-work distribution from an attempt to obfuscate a pre-mine.

Because otherwise we get into subjective arguments about where is the official location for an ANN, and what constitutes a sufficiently fair ANN circumstance (e.g. binaries provided, etc). Given a long enough duration of mining, the free market sorts out those subjective issues sufficiently to the value proposition which the decentralized free market ascertains. The duration should be sufficient that mining is still ongoing when the token has gained significant awareness in the market, i.e. at least until well after the first major pump (which for Steem was summer 2016).

I also lean to agree that it is unlikely that STEEM is prosecuted as a high priority, if ever (probably never). The probable main target of the current crackdown are the Xerox copy purely ICOs on Ethereum.

And perhaps other purely ICO distributed tokens such as NEO and Qtum although these are probably viewed constructively (i.e. not vacuous projects) by regulators other than the fact they have an investment securities structure. There is another way to structure fundraising so the tokens are not investment securities. That is to separate the fundraising shares and the tokens. Pay out dividends to the shares, instead of transferring capital gains in tokens.

But even though I may agree that it is unlikely that Steem will be become illegal to trade very soon, there is no way I would buy any of these. Why put myself in danger in the future 5 years from now when the governments in the West become much more desperate and totalitarian. They could dig up any old reasons to confiscate assets. Better to invest in things which were launched 100% legally. Surely you value yourself and your freedom more than some token.

I urge you to consider launching a Steem replacement which is launched 100% legally. Or joining someone who does.