You are viewing a single comment's thread from:
RE: The SEC shuts down 1Broker, are other exchanges next?
Fair enough on not complying with KYC/AML but how can the SEC expect exchanges to register them when the SEC has not clearly stated their position on cryptocurrencies with regards to being securities..... or are they hinting that anything other than ETH and BTC are securities???
I am not sure either. It sounded like the SEC was going to give a free pass to coins that may have been securities technically when they initially launched but are not much more decentralized. Though like you mentioned, no one is really sure.
1Broker was selling stocks like Apple and Microsoft for bitcoin, along with commodities like oil. They weren't shut down for exchanging crypto for crypto.
Correct, they were the lowest of the low hanging fruit. The question is where do regulators go next?
They were not selling stocks. They were offering trading in contracts for difference for said stocks. Not the stocks themselves. Huge difference. It's like you and I making a bet on the price of some asset. A contract between ourselves. The SEC feels that it has the right to barge in and get in between of that. And this company wasn't even registered in the US. I don't understand why the owners gave themselves up so quickly. They could have moved the website to another, non-US controlled TLD and continued.
Of course you're right. I was well aware at the time of posting this that they weren't certifying ownership of actual shares in these companies. It was a combination of laziness and realizing that anyone requiring such a detailed explanation was really not qualified for the discussion.
That aside, I'm with you. I think it's ridiculous how much control the various regulating bodies have over what trades/ services/ etc are allowed between two or more agreeing parties. I can see some pros to enforcing such stringent laws (most of them having to do with protecting the ridiculously stupid from suffering the full breadth of their own ignorance), but I believe that they're FAR outweighed by the cons, and what happened with 1Broker is just another example (of many millions) of the latter.