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Comment by johndhi | Hacker News Reader

Question: is it even possible to register as a security? If you do, what follows?

So if SOL for example were to register somewhere, what would they need to do, and what would I need to do to buy it?

There’s no fundamental reason it would be impossible. Solana Labs would need to file a registration statement with the SEC (https://www.sec.gov/education/smallbusiness/goingpublic/regi...) including among other things a description of its business practices and audited financial statements.

Once they did that, you would be able to buy and sell it at any registered exchange who’s willing to list it. Coinbase, maybe, if they’re willing to accept the costs and regulations involved.

Except that it would exclude a raft of non-US citizens then, i.e. any sanctioned country, Coinbase would also need to become registered as an ATS and their current settlement and clearing processes would need to be re-engineered from the ground up. For all intents and purposes you cannot register a cryptocurrency with the SEC and then go on trading it anywhere publicly - it doesn't exist. There's only been a few projects that managed to avoid this: Enigma for example moved to a decentralized network and changed their coin over (so it was magically no longer a security according to the SEC) and the SEC just fined them and made them issue refunds for the project raise.

> it would exclude a raft of non-US citizens then, i.e. any sanctioned country

This lays bare the problem with the status quo. Wanting to profit off sanctions busting isn’t a sympathetic pitch.

In some cases, I find it sympathetic. For example, I don't think it's a clear cut moral resolution that people should exclude Iran from buying US goods and services, but they are on the sanctioned list. I supported Obama dropping sanctions on Iran back when he was president.

There's a difference between what is legal and what is moral. For what is moral, there are hardly any absolute answers.

> I don't think it's a clear cut moral resolution that people should exclude Iran from buying US goods and services, but they are on the sanctioned list

Sure. But crypto is an inefficient way to express that policy preference. And it's difficult to comport claims of altruistic intent with crypto's financial incentives.

Registering a security means basically an IPO. The burden is very high and is out of reach for crypto startups that have little revenue and under $1 million in funding.

There's a lot of non equity securities?

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