Glad we’re talking in more depth here…I think it’s good for the DAO…
I appreciate your discourse, and I doubt I can say anything to fully change your mind.
I don’t think my mind needs to be fully changed, because I think people know in their hearts that I’m right on some points. My stance can be modified with legit discussion, but not with what I hear most people saying, which is “regulation is coming!” so “trust the team!” BS.
So let’s talk.
declaring APE a security would immediately remove it off of US exchanges - price would plummet. Furthermore, this is far from an inconvenience if we are looking at mass adoption. Closing doors to the US market is not a reasonable option - full stop.
This is what I’m talking about in being caught up in the US bubble. Your perception of what would happen even if APE was declared a security TODAY is just overblown and full of unsubstantiated fear hype. Let’s take a look at APE LPs.
Put the exchanges in order by 24 hour volume and the first US exchange APE is listed on, Coinbase, doesn’t show up until #9 on the list. Add that to the next, Kraken, and APE would lose 4.38% of its trading volume. Not nothing, but far from catastrophic.
APE could survive, but we are dead in the water thinking this would thrive on DEX trading alone.
We can’t go from thinking “APE on US exchanges” to “DEX trading alone.” It’s 100% just not true. The folks who put up APE liquidity were very smart in making sure the vast majority of LPs were in exchanges registered in BVI, Seychelles, Singapore, etc. Fact is, trading still would thrive.
declaring APE a security would immediately remove it off of US exchanges
What it means to declare something a security is that it must register with and be accepted by the SEC before it can be put on US exchanges. Nothing more. It’s not a death sentence.
Look at Ooki DAO where voters of the DAO are being named specifically in the lawsuit
That’s a CFTC case regarding margin trading, so the application to what I’m talking about is marginal. It’s also a fishing expedition. In this and other cases like LBRY vs. SEC, the government agencies are targeting less powerful entities to establish precedent. Ooki DAO was targeted because it’s not even that active any more. Even so, a16z is coming to its defense as well as many other interested parties with money. A lawsuit is not an automatic loss. Although I am keeping up with the “victories” the agencies take. A moment to look at LBRY vs. SEC, which the SEC recently won:
tl;dr - Courts will now rule in favor of the SEC based on the “economic realities” of how a token is used, not the formal language. This is the 3rd case upholding this precedent. Meaning? APE is traded on exchanges speculatively. No amount of holding-treasury-in-APE-alone or saying-APE-is-a-utility is gonna stop them from trying to securitize APE under the LBRY precedent. But why did they attack LBRY and Ooki and not APE? Because APE has more lawyer money. We should be fighting now and establishing new precedent, not bending and scraping to government agencies that are going to sue you anyway.
I don’t understand the strategy, unless the strategy is to obtain privileges for APE alone through personal connections in government. Dude, Circle, the most compliant company in the world, paid $10.4M in fines to the SEC. Coinbase has had legal actions against it, and Brian Armstrong is a sycophant. What “constraints” do you think accepting will let you avoid a showdown?
The SEC is even trying to claim jurisdiction over Ethereum because Ethereum nodes are “clustered more densely” in the U.S. than in any other country.
Of course they are. Another fishing expedition. We shan’t even get into how everybody celebrated the move to PoS, and those of us who really KNOW this space could see this coming a mile away.
Short lesson on the SEC: It fools you into thinking it has more power than it actually has. When it says “We won’t go after bitcoin” it means “We can’t go after bitcoin. There’s no one to sue.” While Ethereum was PoW, it had this same power. Now that ETH is PoS, it doesn’t. The environment crap was a 100% smokescreen. This isn’t about law or correct behavior. This is about power. The SEC will take all the power it can, and that’s it.
Point is, this DAO trying to comply with stuff that hasn’t even been detailed yet won’t stop the government from fishing. Playing nice just means you preemptively give them whatever they want so you don’t face a lawsuit. And you still might get sued. So the point of your preemptive give was what?
(doxxed or undoxxed)
And how do you expect the court will levy punishment on an undoxxed wallet, or even a doxxed one for that matter, should the “owner” deny claim to it? This is a scare tactic to force people into preemptive compliance (mind you, compliance with nothing at this point), and it’s working on a lot of people.
Special Council are absolutely putting themselves at risk personally, particularly the present council who could be thought to “lead” ApeCoin at inception.
100% I agree with this. So anyone who doesn’t want to have this conversation in reality, not fear, should step aside.
Given the scale of this DAO, they are needed.
I don’t think so. Maybe people are more comfortable with a pyramidal structure.
It won’t be an overnight process so we need to work under the constraints as best we can.
What constraints? Right now you’re making them up. And they won’t help you, because if the government wants to go fishing and target you, they will. At least define what these constraints are for me, taking into account the new information I’ve brought debunking the securities catastrophe many people are making up in their heads as well as the reliance of APE on US exchanges.
@Lost …
The Bluetail grant request will require you to KYC, even if your companies are requesting the grant.
A fine point. I may stop the proposal wholesale depending on how this is conducted. We’ll see… 
I’m interested in @BoredApeG’s idea of funding ecosystem projects. It could be a good workaround for now.
Bluetail is an ecosystem project! So I sincerely hope the KYC process doesn’t stop it from happening. But even if it does, understanding the defi within it can be a huge step forward for the DAO to sustain itself even if it must function under these hypothetical “restraints.” I hope people will attend the Twitter Spaces I will conduct, likely on Wednesday.
Hopefully we can continue discussion with more facts, more new ideas, and less fear. What an exciting time to live in — a chance to change the world! Move bravely!