I have to say that the way that both Bitfunder and BTCT have handled things is absolutely atrocious.
If they are pretending that the conditions that are forcing them to shutter their doors didn't exist when they set up their exchanges, they are either liars, unethical or incompetent.
Each of them has created large quantifiable financial losses for people who had relied on their assertions and now they want to shove that responsibility off onto another entity. I'd love to see even a redacted version of the Cease and Desist letter either of these exchanges received. Because, I don't believe one exists. They've scared themselves out of doing something that they should have known was scary to do in the first place.
Acting like all the rules around issuing securities just happened is a joke. They were in place for literally decades and closing in on a century before these exchanges were ever conceived.
They knew the risks of running one of these things, if they weren't up to it they should have never started.
This is exactly it. Pretending that the stocks were for educational purposes was a joke. Any company that takes in the equivalent of millions of dollars USD from investors is definitely not for educational purposes and should expect to be regulated like every other business in the united states. So clearly both of these exchanges were operating illegally, is there any reason to believe havelock is not going to suffer the same fate? Has anyone actually looked through their terms and how they operate carefully because it seems we only ever come to realize how incompetent these companies are after they have already fucked us over.