Quote from: Zeke_Vermillion on May 18, 2013, 06:23:07 AM

Quote from: darkmule on May 17, 2013, 09:10:48 PM

Quote from: Zeke_Vermillion on May 17, 2013, 03:31:27 PM

My partner Joe Skocilich wrote a fairly good post awhile back about why we don't think that bitcoin is a "security" http://adlervermillion.com/blog/innovation-and-legal-panic%E2%80%94bitcoin/

Ya know, the bitcoin foundation really ought to commission a policy position paper of some sort...

BTC is not, itself, a security. However, there are people creating and buying and selling items packaged as securities in which the underlying business is BTC-based. They trade on what are purported to be "stock exchanges." Some of these are outright Ponzi scams.

Similarly, BTC is not, itself, a Ponzi scam. However, Ponzi scams exist in which the underlying currency is BTC.

If nothing else, some of these highly questionable products look like some kind of commodities future.

Fair point. It is possible that a btc-denominated contract could be considered a "security" especially since many of the promoters refer to them that way. I consider the bitcoin "stock" exchanges to be amusing novelties at the moment, but for sure some of the larger issues do involve material sums.

BTC is an Over the Counter Credit Swap Derivative (OCD) in the eyes of the law. You can't regulate it without stepping on some very very TBTF bankstering toes. Anything that would threaten Over the Counter Swaps would totally threaten and jeopardize the principle criminal loophole by which the TBTF "investment" banksters can insider trade all day long to fix stock prices and bond and futures markets by merely ping-ponging predetermined losses back and forth, thus keeping their shorted Defaulted Credit Losses completely "off their books" by "swapping them" (and keeping any profits they've stampeded) each day.

A bitcoin is an Over the Counter (OTC) Credit-Swap (funded Credit Swap or fCS).

To you, it is only worth what the last guy sold it to you for and made off with. You funded "his" credit for it and the next guy (is assumed to be willing to) fund yours! It is a funded credit derivative backed by nothing but faith.(in a "next guy")

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodity_Futures_Modernization_Act_of_2000

The reason Bitcoins/Altcoin tokens are legal is because they are OTC derivatives (of their own past-funding transaction) with a uniquely intrinsic digital anti-conterfeiting network-transfer capability (marginal intrinsic value). Otherwise they would be a Ponzi scheme.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=175708.msg1832923#msg1832923