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Comment by tim333 | Hacker News Reader

"DOJ will no longer prosecute cryptocurrency fraud" is clickbait and not what the Todd Blanche memo says.

They will still go after the Sam Bankman-Frieds:

>Prosecutors shall prioritize cases that hold accountable individuals who (a) cause financial harm to digital asset investors and consumers; and/or (b) use digital assets in furtherance of other criminal conduct...

But seem to be intending to deal with whether it is ok to do things like issue trump token by setting regulations rather than prosecuting companies after the event. Which is not wholly a bad idea.

Memo text here: https://archive.ph/Td0Fn

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> ok to do things like issue trump token by setting regulations

That would make sense if the Trump admin were actually regulating crypto but they're tearing that up as well.[1] Why would Trump regulate his own scam coins? Finally regulation isn't a magic wand that stops behavior, it stops it with the threat of punishment after the event. So no this doesn't make sense.

1: https://thehill.com/policy/technology/5170036-trump-sec-cryp...

Yes, but typically there are clear guidelines on what will be punished and what is allowed. That was not the case under Gensler. Crypto companies begged for clear regulations and the SEC steadfastly refused to publish any. Instead they just filed enforcement actions and people had to find out their view of things in court.

And as your link says:

> “We in the crypto space felt it was very deceptive the way they [the Biden administration] went about dealing with crypto firms. They told crypto firms to come in and register, to come in and engage with them,” said Nic Carter, a founding partner at crypto investment firm Castle Island Ventures. “There was no meaningful way to do that.”

Yeah, and the day they find an application for crypto that isn't "literal unregulated security" (the basis of all the enforcement "lacking guidelines" you are complaining about!) will be the day I dig deep to find some compassion. Until then, the guidelines are clear if you want to market and sell securities. You just didn't like what they say.

If they are securities, then there should be a way to register them with the SEC and follow the law. As your link said, that's not the case.

But BTC and ETH at least are not considered securities at this point, and in general, the SEC has not done all that well when companies took it to court.

Gensler was perfectly clear, the crypto people just did not like the answer.

He said everything is a security but he didn't sue everything. It felt really unfair if you got sued and your competitors didn't.

He didn't even tell whether ETH, the second highest value cryptocurrency is considered security or not, even though he was asked about it all the time.

>Prosecutors shall prioritize cases that hold accountable individuals who (a) cause financial harm to digital asset investors and consumers

Technically FTX/Alameda was able to repay investors and consumers so did SBF cause financial harm?

He definitely did fraud (a crime), but did he cause financial harm?

Similarly does Money Laundering (a crime) cause financial harm?

Yes, considering it was ~2 years from freezing withdrawals to the approved bankruptcy plan to repay customers.

FTX was only able to repay customers because the value of BTC increased during that time. But customers were only repaid the value of their portfolio at the time of the collapse.

If I steal your money, invest it, then return the principal amount after 2 years, would you consider it financial harm?

does that mean musk will finally pay for the dogecoin manipulation?

Many reasons why this wouldn't be sufficient. Having a fall guy is a good example, doesn't allow for action against organization level willful fraud would be another. It basically slows down any sort of justice.

Just another good reason to stay out of crypto unless you're already rich and have money to gamble.

(This was originally posted as a reply to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43634582, but it's a substantive comment so I've merged it along with the others.)

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