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Comment by pffft8888 | Hacker News Reader

The message with the FBI coordinating with social media platforms to censor Americans and now gov agencies going after Coinbase (the company that has tried hard to stick to the letter of the law, which is a valid position in a capitalist country) tells me that we are entering a phase where the gov is simply going mad with power. Down vote all you want I don't care (or I care more about sharing my observation than your disapproval.)

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Well, if they wanted to stick to the letter of the law, they'd immediately stop selling unregistered securities. It's not like it's difficult to register a security with the SEC.

Who gets to define them as unregistered securities? The SEC claimed BUSD is a security and shut it down. If stabelcoins pegged against the dollar with provable 1:1 reserves are a security then... SEC needs to be dismantled or reset.

BUSD are two different currencies operated by different entities, while pretending it was the same, or it was anyway. The one backed 1:1 was offered by Paxos in the US and the other printed by Binance as they saw fit, while pretending it was the same. That's why it was killed off.

FedNow is launching in July. I think the motivations here are pretty obvious.

Is this confirmed that it's really launching in July, do you have a source?

https://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/pressreleases/othe...

> Coinbase (the company that has tried hard to stick to the letter of the law

Where is their HQ?

Is Remote unlawful?

In SF last I checked

I was confused and talking about Binance. Coinbase does appear to be law abiding.

Coinbase's whole shtick is to be the law-abiding crypto exchange, so it's kind of alarming to see the sudden SEC action against them, when their entire value is based on the goal of working in good-faith with regulators to bring crypto into the mainstream economy.

> when their entire value is based on the goal of working in good-faith with regulators

Armstrong spends his day tweeting insults at the SEC. I know Gemini and Coinbase positioned themselves, to users and investors, as regulatory friendly and compliant. But they didn’t behave the way compliance-obsessed firms do.

> Armstrong spends his day tweeting insults at the SEC.

I don't follow Armstrong on Twitter. Can you cite some examples? I took a brief look through his Tweets mentioning "SEC" [0] and didn't see any Tweet that a reasonable person would consider an "insult."

Also, the rate of his Tweets containing "SEC" seems much lower than what you'd expect from someone who "spends his day" tweeting at the SEC - surely such a person would mention the SEC in their Tweets more than a few times per year.

[0] https://twitter.com/search?q=from%3A%40brian_armstrong%20SEC...

The "really sketchy behavior" rant came to mind [1]. This isn't someone who's trying to build regulatory relationships. It's someone who wants to look like he has them. (Similar to SBF's political donations not resembling someone who wants to build political goodwill. Just someone who wants to appear as much.)

Note: I'm not arguing Armstrong had no points. But if you're going to air out your regulatory complaints ex ante and in public, you're not playing in the good-and-compliant lane.

[1] https://twitter.com/brian_armstrong/status/14354392917153587...

Based on the content of his Tweets, many of which are complaining about lack of communication from SEC, I assume he didn't start by airing the complaints in public.

They're also a public regulatory agency, so I'm skeptical of the premise that it's somehow wrong to communicate publicly with them. Arguably he has a duty to his shareholders to do so, or at least to let his shareholders know the status of pending or current enforcement actions against Coinbase.

> I'm skeptical of the premise that it's somehow wrong to communicate publicly with them

It's not. But it's not "working in good-faith with regulators." Coinbase has been antagonistic with the SEC from the outset.

The rant seems to be ex post, though. It is after he received notification that his company would be sued if they launched the product and after they wouldn't explain the rules after he asked.

It's not like he jumped right into it. And especially notable is that they let other exchanges operate the same feature.

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