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Comment by marcinzm | Hacker News Reader

The piece doesn't note the additional fun fact that the website to buy the tokens is blocked in the US presumably to avoid an SEC investigation.

edit: Blocked at the cloudflare level without even an explanation of why if you go there.

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> fun fact

It's absolutely hilarious, the SEC has gone after so many different coins, ICO's and exchanges now who have gone to far greater lengths in excluding Americans. The first person who gets around it opens you up to all sorts of civil and criminal charges.

I don't understand how after years of this happening any company thinks it's somehow safe with nothing more than an IP geofence.

If they make reasonable attempts to keep out Americans, requiring IP proxies and checking a box saying "I am not an American," then is it really their fault when Americans end up using it?

Yes, because of KYC

Thus far the SEC penalties are fairly uniformly ... raise a billion dollars from suckers, pay a penalty of $25 million as part of a settlement where they promise no further action kinda stuff. Just a really minor cost of doing business.

They have to. If they allow even the possibility of a monetary transaction to a United States citizen, they fall under SEC, FINRA, and FINCen, which among other things, requires compliance with AML/a KYC process.

This kills the Signal value proposition.

You can move money electronically legally, or you can be anonymous in the U.S. It us incredibly difficult if not nigh impossible to do both.

It's part of the U.S. soft power projection scheme. If you want access to American markets/easy movement of financial assets, you leave audit trail.

> If they allow even the possibility of a monetary transaction to a United States citizen, they fall under SEC, FINRA, and FINCen, which among other things, requires compliance with AML/a KYC process.

Bad news for them then: there are lots of American citizens in the UK.

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