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Comment by quuquuquu | Hacker News Reader

Child porn is a crime committed via Internet. It is vigorously prosecuted.

Identity theft is a crime committed via Internet. It is lazily prosecuted.

Stock fraud ("securities" fraud) is a crime that is also vigorously prosecuted.

Bitcoin and alt coins, just like WoW gold, are not stocks. Therefore how can the state say Big Vern is committing securities fraud, and that we should spend millions of dollars attempting to "bring him to justice"?

EDIT:

Correct, I agree, but this occured in 2014 and would therefore be retroactive application of the law.

From what I remember, we were operating in a complete and total vacuum.

Big Vern's only mistake was being born a US citizen. If he was Russian, he would be a free man.

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> Bitcoin and alt coins, just like WoW gold, are not stocks.

Not relevant, securities doesn't mean stocks. A security is basically any financial instrument of value, and crytpo's are most certainly securities and obviously always have been.

You need to get over this notion that "new" things are somehow not subject to existing laws. Slapping a new name like bitcoin on a financial security doesn't suddenly make it not a security; the law is not so trivially circumvented, the law doesn't need to mention a thing by name for it to apply to said thing.

Bitcoin wasn't a security in 2014

You can't retroactively apply the law. Well apparently the government acts like they can. But in my (biased) mind they shouldn't.

Bitcoin was a security the second it came into existence. The law doesn't need to retroactively be applied, it always applied. New things aren't somehow immune from existing law because they haven't been explicitly named by the law. The law doesn't need to say "crypto's are securities" for crytpo's to be securities. Don't confuse regulators clarifying how they're going to enforce the law with changes in the law. Those clarifications come out to make it clear to "magical thinkers" that existing laws do apply and will be enforced as X.

> The law doesn't need to retroactively be applied, it always applied. New things aren't somehow immune from existing law because they haven't been explicitly named by the law. The law doesn't need to say "crypto's are securities" for crytpo's to be securities.

How about.. when a law is wrong? or if it's not just? or is changed, for this matter? since you think it's retroactively applied, which way or which one of 2 or more conflicting law are/is 'applied' retroactively?

The law isn't wrong, bitcoin is obviously a financial security and always was from its inception. Nothing is being retroactively applied here. The only issue here is cryto fans odd beliefs thinking crypto is somehow immune to existing regulations.

> Big Vern's only mistake was being born a US citizen. If he was Russian, he would be a free man.

There aren't a lot of crimes you can't excuse this way (by substituting various countries in place of Russia).

As I understand it the SEC has begun to classify crypto-coins as an official asset class based on various criteria[0]. This means that while bitcoin and other alt-coins may not be a "Stock" they are being considered a "Security" under U.S. regulation and thus saying Big Vern commited securities fraud is not inconsistent with U.S. regulation.

[0]: http://www.businessinsider.com/bitcoin-price-security-equity...

I didn't comment exactly on THAT, only on your first points. Anyway, I actually believe Bitcoin is not private property to begin with. But I still think contracts are legally enforçable.

I apologize, that's tunnel vision on my part from other comments XD

I don't really understand what contract there is to legally enforce. Say I send some bits to Big Vern's site. One day, the bits aren't there anymore. If it was a legally incorporated real bank, and my bits represented real dollars or Euros or etc, then I would be fuming pissed and would be suing.

But Big Vern did not run a site with any express guarantees, and I did not send him any legal tender. So we were effectively operating in a legal vacuum.

One time I left my car at a repair shop. All the cars they had in the lot were stolen. The police didn't arrest the shop owner for negligence. They just went and tried to find the thieves.

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