> 10. There's actually a good chance that there's not a single person in your entire state or country that knows how to do your taxes.
And this is because your entire business model is to get around laws that were put in place ON PURPOSE.
Take anonymous money transfers for any amounts. This is why KYC/AML laws exist.
If someone could show how a cryptocurrency with anonymous features can follow KYC/AML laws, I'm all ears.
Begging for regulatory clarity makes it seems one-sided. It seems very clear to me that the dream the cryptocurrency companies are trying to sell is fundamentally incompatible with the intent of the regulation, even if not yet its text.
What can they be left with afterwards? We'll see, but it won't be the vision they've sold.
> Nobody wants to invest millions into something that may or may not end up being designated as illegal.
The bitcoin blockchain has child porn on it. And BTC is explicitly designed to break KYC/AML laws. Yet people invest.
Zcash has done a lot of work on this. https://z.cash/compliance/
There are really dumb laws that you need a powerful defense or deterrent against.
The biggest problem is that you cant talk about them, or even share the deterrents, because it makes you a target for the regulators if you do. Its actually better that the regulators simply know you have a lawyer, and that they have no idea what your legal strategy is. In finance, ignorance of the law is an excuse (“scienter”), they codified the law specifically that way for themselves, and so giving any knowledge about the law undermines the defense of your own actions, and being able to say “my lawyer made me do it” is an even better defense.
This also means that each and every project has to recreate the legal guidance, until Congress explicitly makes a safe harbor route a default regulatory regime.
Corporate Securities lawyers know it, exchanges and service providers know it, they carved out a niche for themselves to provide this legal service and it costs 6 figures easily. It is not a perfect defense.
Many crypto project issuers are victims in this regard, with everyone onboard with this racket, they cant even talk to the SEC about what’s wrong.
Taxes aren't that hard but most providers overthink the word “crypto” when they hear it and confuse themselves.
So the aim is to break the intent of the law. Laws that were put there on purpose.
So I really don't understand what you mean by "nah". It's exactly that. Company sees the law, says "that's dumb, I'm going to break that but in a complicated way" and then does breaks it using what they consider a loophole.
"Nah"? No, you exactly agree.
> In finance, ignorance of the law is an excuse
Yet you can also get convicted for tax fraud without having intent.
And the flip side of what you said is also that (depending on jurisdiction) it can be illegal to do something legal, if your motive was to get around the intent of the law. Using loopholes can be illegal, even though the act is legal.
> This also means that each and every project has to recreate the legal guidance, until Congress explicitly makes a safe harbor route a default regulatory regime.
This is just delusional. I think you forgot who has the guns.
So basically crypto projects dont mind securities laws, they do mind that the securities laws have lots of unnecessary contigencies added to them that makes it impossible to couple with utility.
If a crypto token actually was a registered security, then nobody could list it because they arent broker dealers. All the partnership projects could not be because the partner would have to be a broker dealer. There would be zero framework to potentially add utility at all, if they complied with laws that didn't consider issued assets existing peer to peer outside of any walled garden. Alternatively, it can exist as a consumer product under the consumer framework, no different than the secondary market for Nike shoes, and thats what people do. Upon asking “how does Nike do it? People can walk in the shoes but many people buy their shoes with an expectation of profit” my securities attorney told me that Nike probably has securities legal opinions too.
Congress and commissioners at the SEC are warm to helping this, you are going to have to retire your talking points to the last decade as the grownups are building and some are representatives.
> they do mind that the securities laws have lots of unnecessary contigencies added to them
Specifically what? What laws have what aspects, and more importantly why were they put in place, and why should they not apply to cryptocurrencies (but to other things?).
You're talking as if laws sprung from nature, somehow.
A requirement which did not spring from nature but has no usefulness for fungible consumer products and simply hasn’t been revisited
Without clarity from regulators it is impossible to simultaneously comply with FTC consumer regulations and SEC investor regulations as they are incompatible regulatory regimes which alter how things are marketed, promoted, traded and accounted for.
And actually complying with SEC regulations means there is no where to trade it. There is a joke amongst securities attorneys about the Howey Test which is the premier securities framework from the Supreme Court “if Howey wanted to comply and register properly as a security how would he? Well he couldn't because they’re fucking oranges”. And that reality exists for digital assets today, yet the market is there and the risk:reward is extremely favorable.
But what you might be missing from trying to nitpick specific regulations: The SEC will never ever ever fulfill its mission from Congress of protecting crypto asset investors by sanctioning crypto asset issuers, it will only hurt the investors in the current reality. Whatever it does in the equities space is not applicable here as the SEC's arbitrary adversarial actions provide the opposite of confidence in the crypto market and facilitating capital formation. It understands that part too which is a contributing factor for why its actions are limited pending modern direction from the legislative branch, and its prudent that you understand that as well.