So, what are you saying here? Of course SEC laws apply to anyone purporting to sell an investment scheme. He could have been involved in a 'potato' based investment scheme and the SEC would have gotten involved because he was promoting an investment scheme. Mt Gox was not promoting an investment scheme. They are an exchange. The Pirate40 example has no relation to Mt Gox, which is what I am trying to explain to you.
For the third time, I believe, this is crystal clear. I explicitly pointed out the difference between a BTC-denominated asset and BTC. Please stop repeating yourself. If it pleases you, forget that I ever mentioned Pirate40.
What I am trying to explain to you is that it is not clear that the SEC does not / will not apply securities regulations to businesses as they pertain to bitcoin.
If SEC regulations specifically omit certain types of assets from regulation -- what are they, and what is the basis of omission? Can this basis be applied to bitcoin or not? This is the legal question which has not been touched on. You have not even brought up the pertinent laws, let alone proven this.
I asked if you could provide specific statutory language -- and precedent -- that suggests that security law does not apply. I assume you cannot. Absent that, there really is no basis by which you can say with any certainty that security laws do not apply here.
In my view, this would very much violate the spirit of securities regulation. The fact that BTC is not backed by any asset does not explicitly allow businesses to engage in fraud.
What is
this? What would violate the spirit of securities regulation?
The implicit permission for exchanges to engage in fraudulent practices -- such as insider trading and front running -- which would be illegal in any other conceivable market.
I am asserting that the spirit of securities regulations were to address fraud in investment markets. The only thing that separates bitcoin from stocks or physically-backed commodities in this sense is the existence of an underlying asset. I am not convinced that this basis alone permits market actors to legally engage in fraud.