As many lawyers in the space have anticipated, state regulators are beginning to get involved with token sales and #icos. Today, the Texas State Securities Board brought a C&D against BitConnect. This C&D has implications for tokens used for staking.
By way of background, Texas has adopted the federal Howey test for purposes of anlalyzing Texas state securities laws issues. Like federal securities laws, Texas looks to the "economic realities" related to a transaction.
Thus this decision provides additional information about how regulators will view token sales. More importantly, it's our first look at how regulators will view tokens used for staking.
BitConnect was a purported virtual currency (what the CFTC has broadly described as a commodity, in the context of bitcoin) and thus presumably outside the scope of Texas state securities laws.
Nevertheless, Texas--like the SEC--found a securities law violation under its state laws, as well as related fraud claims. Texas's analysis primarily focused on the marketing materials used by the promoters of BitConnect and promises made by the promoter of profits via staking.
Some examples below
However, Texas also focused on BitConnect's failure to identify persons who developed and controlled the project.
Texas also (somewhat oddly) raised issue with the fact that the promoters, here, did not flag that the virtual currency would be in competition with other virtual currencies.
We should see more enforcement actions coming from states regulatory authorities in 2018.
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It's becoming increasingly clear that blockchain technology and generative AI will be two key trends that will shape the future of the Internet.
These two tech trends will converge. And, without blockchains, we'll run the risk of entering into an "age of incoherence"
As we're seeing in real-time, AI is rapidly evolving and is poised to revolutionize a wide range of industries. But with the explosion of content that AI will generate, there is a clear need for a way to authenticate and verify that content
This is where blockchain technology comes in. By using a decentralized, distributed data structure to authenticate and verify data, blockchains can help ensure the integrity and credibility of the information that is being generated by AI
The bill makes it possible to create an entity that is actually called a "DAO"; that's just really cool.
You will be able to transact with an organization called "XYZ, DAO."
DAO's can take any shape developers want. It can be flat and democratically managed or algorithmically managed. You even can explore more hierarchical structures (but, imho that's less exciting)
There aren't significant legal restraints in the shape of DAOs.
Curious why Ethereum is gaining ground? Ethereum currently is seeing exponential from two simultaneous growth curves and there are three growing in the wings. Long thread below 👇
The first is #defi. The growth of #defi has been hyperbolic. The last time we saw this was when the entire ecosystem of digital assets grew from just over ten billion to $100 billion over the course of several months in late 2016 early 2017
It's showing no signs of stopping, as we're witnessing oracles like @ChainLink help support more complex automated financial systems.
The above article is great progress, but I think underappreciates some of the core technical characteristics embedded into / are being built on top of these networks.
With blockchain, the world can get:
1) digital property rights 2) censor resistance (i.e., digital-first amendment rights) 3) democratic voting schemes 4) globally accessible/permissionless marketplaces 5) universal and non-centrally managed identification systems