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Comment by lukev | Hacker News Reader

But if it's not a security, is it fraud?

If I sell you a hand drawn stick figure for $100, and you buy it because it's "art", then there's no rug to pull. You bought it, and it doesn't matter to the artist whether the resale value goes up or down. If it goes down, it's still not fraud.

But if I sell you a hand drawn stick figure for $100, and you buy it with the mutual expectation that it will eventually be worth more because of the value of the brand/project, and the effort I put in to grow that value... isn't that a security, by definition?

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>But if I sell you a hand drawn stick figure for $100, and you buy it with the mutual expectation that it will eventually be worth more because of the value of the brand/project, and the effort I put in to grow that value... isn't that a security, by definition?

This seems equivalent to buying a baseball card of a specific player with the expectation that the player will put in effort into the game and thus increase the value of the card. People buy cards of specific players on the assumption that they can buy in cheap and sell when the value of the player's brand increases.

It's really not equivalent. The player does not issue the card.

perhaps the player isn’t the important bit really. It’s the card manufacturer in fact. If I print a Nolan Ryan card no one cares. If a name brand does, and also promises to grow their brand and that will make it more valuable, maybe that is more closely related?

The player does not issue the card. The player does not profit from any "appreciation" of the cards. The amount of player cards sold is nowhere near that of NFTs so the potential damage is limited and the history of player cards has always been for "collector" value and not a real investment. The history of NFTs has been since day one for Investment.

> The history of NFTs has been since day one for Investment.

I'd argue that there was a brief moment -- right at the start, when NFTs were a novelty and most of the ones being minted were one-offs which purportedly represented unique things created independently from the NFT, like a YouTube video or a tweet or a piece of art -- where one could conceivably argue that NFTs could be collector's items and not investments.

The moment that groups like Larva Labs started minting runs of thousands of NFTs with images stamped out from a template, though, that argument became much harder to support. Nowadays, it's thoroughly dead.

By that definition, anything purchased with the intent of reselling for a higher price in more favorable market conditions would be a security -- real estate, product inventory in a warehouse, etc.

that's where we are:

its either go after all collections with this outstanding low hanging and untenable application of Howey, or show the exact distinction that asset creators can follow to act solely as a consumer product like the fine artists and watch collections

it is also accurate that if following a consumer protection framework, most activities and behaviors would not be fraud.

so for a creator or secondary market operator or promoter, not knowing which branch of theory to follow makes all of their behavior bifurcated and prosecutable under one framework, a securities framework, but not a consumer protection framework. and vice versa.

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