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Comment by chewbaxxa | Hacker News Reader

I guess they should go ahead and indict Musk and the rest of crypto Twitter too then.

This situation is quite different than that of Tesla and Elon Musk.

1. Mcafee was an individual that pumped the price and sold his position for realized gains.

2. Tesla is a publicly traded company, which made all of the regulatory and legal filings necessary for the purchase of their crypto.

3. Tesla has no forseeable plans to exit their position.

4. This article isn't telling the entire story. Mcafee was also indicted for Tax evasion, which Elon Musk nor Tesla are committing.

[1] https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/john-mcafee-indicted-tax-evas...

So when they DO make forseeable plans and execute those plans to sell, then it will have happened “after” they pumped BTC. How long should a company hold before a pump and dump become fine?

What pump and dump are you talking about?

Pump = buy a lot of something so the price goes up. Let's say $2 billion of it

Dump = sell at the higher prices and match the increased demand

This is whats being advocated by market analysts, and it would be considered "fine": https://www.benzinga.com/analyst-ratings/analyst-color/21/03...

If companies don't collude but do it in a sequence, then when does it become ok?

As a different example, in 2014 employees alleged that Silicon Valley companies colluded to depress their wages, by acting like a cartel:

https://equitablegrowth.org/aftermath-wage-collusion-silicon...

But cartels can form without having to collude, merely by people acting in concert on a meme or belief (like HODL or SQUEEZE THE SQUOZE) and this seems fine!

https://arxiv.org/abs/1201.3798

A pump and dump scheme requires that the "pump" be achieved by making fraudulent representations about the assets being "pumped" to artificially increase their value, followed by said assets being offloaded at the artificially increased value.

McAfee did that all of that. Tesla/Musk did not (no false statements of fact or offloading at artificially inflated values).

Additionally, a "cartel" has a legal definition which requires deliberate coordination of activity (aka "collusion"). Independent activity in which everyone does the same thing without coordination is not a cartel, because the coordination aspect of it is key to the illegality of the act.

So a group of people pumping a cryptocurrency by buying it, and then letting the skyrocketing charts in exchanges and news about it bring new people into the mix, and then selling, is totally fine? Even if this group of people coordinates their activities?

As you wrote it, yes it is completely fine.

Please back that up with links to a legal argument or SOMETHING. I realize it’s hard to prove a negative but can you at least back it up with authoritative links of some sort?

In the U.S., activities are legal unless there is a law stating that they are illegal.

We don't need to provide an authoritative link that the above is legal; you need to provide some sort of authority that it is not.

"According to the indictment, McAfee allegedly evaded his tax liability by directing his income to be paid into bank accounts and cryptocurrency exchange accounts in the names of nominees."

John Mcafee was breaking US law and got caught.

You wait until your previous comments don't have an outsized effect on the market price anymore.

What about tweets like "Dogecoin is the people’s crypto"?

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1357241340313141249

Did Musk dump a bunch of Doge on people? I think that's the big difference.

Do you know he did not?

Are you accusing him based on no evidence or what is your point her? Of course he doesn't have prove that something didn't happen.

I don’t think anyone does, but in America one is innocent until proven guilty and not the other way around.

It is a bit of understated wit of a backhanded compliment given its value is so low everybody can afford it. A massive surge in value is going to over five cents per coin. Of course ironically that makes it a better actual currency instead of a speculation vehicle in spite of being easily mineable by design.

> 4. This article isn't telling the entire story. Mcafee was also indicted for Tax evasion, which Elon Musk nor Tesla are committing.

They probably are, but neither Tesla or Musk are in the Governments / Deep State crooshair, quite the opposite actually, they the modern times poster Stakhanovites.

I know you’re being downvoted for the deep state comment, but for the most part you are correct: Federal Prosecutors routinely target high profile individuals and those that receive negative press.

Musk is incredibly high profile and regularly receives negative press.

I know Musk isn't exactly conventionally sane and tends to be erratic but tax evasion while trying to surplant big oil and muscling in on the auto industry, and grabbing space launche business from Russia would be a downright /stupid/ move.

You cannot reach the level Musk has reach without using all the tools to reach these levels, including tax evasions... with the complicit agreement of many "people in power". It just happens their interest coincide today, tomorrow's another day, interest shifts.

Musk pumped Dogecoin as a joke to prime media radar for Tesla's bitcoin purchase disclosure.

It was in effect a bitcoin pump with dogecoin as a media lure, which given Musk's ability to command attention was nearly as effective e (for TSLA) as pumping bitcoin directly, but without breaking any SEC rules.

Right, but a "pump and dump" scheme requires two things which Tesla/Musk did not do: make knowingly false statements of fact about Dogecoin or Bitcoin, and a "dump" of the assets at inflated values (as it appears that Tesla/Musk still retain their previously announced Bitcoin holdings).

"Without breaking any SEC rules" seems like a perfectly good reason not to indict.

> McAfee and Watson allegedly engaged in a scheme to exploit the “broad reach” of McAfee’s Twitter account by buying cryptocurrency assets, concealing a plan to liquidate them and then selling most quickly after his endorsements boosted prices, the CFTC said in a court document filed on Friday.

Hopefully this enforcement action will put a damper on some of the many apparent investment schemes around cryptocurrencies. At least ones within reach of US regulators.

> I guess they should go ahead and indict Musk and the rest of crypto Twitter too then.

Maybe they will, but it'll probably be a few years. This indictment is for activity in 2018.

https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/john-david-mcafee-and-e...

Yes they should, everything involving “cryptocurrency” is a scam in one way or another.

Dead serious. There is no reason for any of it to exist other than to engage in one form of serious crime or another.

Do you have to complete the "dump" side to be guilty? Does Musk still own all his bitcoin/dogecoins he's purchased? I believe Tesla still owns their $1.5b worth of bitcoins.

Yes you do.

It's not clear that yelling 'buy crypto, crypto is great' while buying crypto is illegal.

It's not even clear that yelling 'buy crypto, crypto is great' while selling crypto is. Bitcoin isn't really a security, and the rules for commodities and currencies are different from those for securities.

There is still time to indict Musk. It could happen.

Seems it doesn’t matter how long it has been since a sale occurred.

https://mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idUSKBN28J2UL

This one in particular would hurt the very investors SEC is supposed to be protecting:

https://www.coindesk.com/xrp-untradeable-sec-security?amp=1

So we should let scams continue because it hurts current investors? Sounds very disingenuous.

What scam are you talking about, exactly?

Ripple

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