[HN Gopher] SEC formally sues cryptocurrency company Ripple
___________________________________________________________________
SEC formally sues cryptocurrency company Ripple
Author : coloneltcb
Score : 180 points
Date : 2020-12-22 20:41 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.axios.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.axios.com)
| uptown wrote:
| Doesn't bode well for XRP Capital:
|
| http://arringtonxrpcapital.com/2017/11/28/announcing-arringt...
| HashBasher wrote:
| Price hasn't zero'd out. Says a lot about the sophistication of
| the holders.
| vmception wrote:
| Partially
|
| First a securities designation and being forced to report
| financials doesn't completely destroy the transactional use
| case, so thats a big misconception in the crypto world. It
| would be incredibly inconvenient though and I doubt
| counterparties for the few Ripple products that are powered by
| XRP will ever want to hold and use XRP.
| aazaa wrote:
| Ironically, this could increase the exchange rate for XRP. Ripple
| controls a large block of uncirculated token that it sells. With
| this legal action, I suspect that supply will no longer be
| entering the market.
|
| Unlike Bitcoin, which issues new currency units through mining,
| XRP is issued by Ripple. The case against Ripple appears to
| revolve around this point: is the XRP token a security?
| boh wrote:
| Or XRP can just evaporate since the infrastructure required to
| actually distribute it will no longer be available once the
| company goes bankrupt (having to pay the various fines and
| lawsuits that follow).
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| Ironically, the underlying cryptocurrency infrastructure has
| little to do with the exchange rates. Most traders aren't
| actually moving cryptocurrency around so much as trading
| numbers back in forth inside of the exchanges. I suspect that
| speculators would continue to trade XRP as long as they're
| allowed to do so on exchanges, but most exchanges are smart
| enough to start delisting currencies when they get in trouble
| like this.
|
| It's truly fascinating how little the underlying technology
| of cryptocurrencies matters to the exchange rates and how
| they're traded.
| boh wrote:
| Markets don't actually move the tokens from one wallet to
| another, the network specific to the currency has to do
| that. Since Ripple is centralized, if the company goes out
| of business, the network does too. You will not be capable
| of trading it at all if that happens.
| nullc wrote:
| There have certainly been altcoins trading where during
| periods where there were literately zero reachable nodes
| running on the internet for them.
|
| Fun fact: Ripple actually lost some of the early history of
| their ledger! Everything before block 32569 was lost.
| Animats wrote:
| _Most traders aren 't actually moving cryptocurrency around
| so much as trading numbers back in forth inside of the
| exchanges._
|
| Yes. That's why Coinbase got out of margin trading. They
| claim the SEC made them do it. But all the SEC did was to
| say that "delivery" meant delivery to the customer's
| wallet, not an entry on Coinbase's books. Coinbase was
| willing to exit margin trading rather than actually pay
| out.
| johntb86 wrote:
| In the future they could turn into something like Rai
| stones, where it's impractical to move them but people
| still trade ownership anyway.
| spottybanana wrote:
| XRP is a security, so is Ethereum, as both have been issued to
| collect initial funding. Bitcoin is not a security because it
| hasn't been issued to collect funding.
|
| To me the distinction is very clear and simple. However if I
| really needed money I still would probably issue an ICO and
| claim it is not a security because there is a big possibility
| that it will go unnoticed as SEC goes only after the bigger
| fish.
| agency wrote:
| The SEC disagrees re: Ether
|
| https://www.axios.com/sec-official-ether-is-not-a-
| security-9...
| polyomino wrote:
| Ethereum does not follow the SEC's definition of
| "decentralized": If the network on which
| the token or coin is to function is sufficiently
| decentralized - where purchasers would no longer reasonably
| expect a person or group to carry out essential managerial
| or entrepreneurial efforts - the assets may not represent
| an investment contract.
|
| https://www.sec.gov/news/speech/speech-hinman-061418
|
| However, in Ethereum's case, it is designed to literally
| implode due to ice age if Vitalik doesn't intervene. The
| SEC was probably not cognizant of this fact when they made
| their statement.
|
| https://ethgasstation.info/blog/what-is-ethereums-ice-age/
| bhaak wrote:
| The existence of Ethereum Classic disproves your
| assumptions of Vitalik's unlimited power over the course
| of the development of Ethereum.
| polyomino wrote:
| the existence of Ethereum classic doesn't affect the
| governance of Ethereum in the same way that stellar does
| not make a difference to the governance of ripple.
| bhaak wrote:
| Stellar is more like LTC as McCaleb took Ripple's code
| and forked it.
|
| But Ethereum Classic and Ethereum share a common
| blockchain history and it proves that the community
| doesn't always follow blindly the proposals of the
| Ethereum devs.
|
| That event (a part of the community splitting of on a
| hardfork and forming Ethereum Classic) has affected the
| governance of Ethereum ever since. Not directly, but
| indirectly.
|
| Every hardfork is now checked for contentious changes
| very thoroughly. The last major change that didn't make
| it because of that was the proposed change to the mining
| algorithm (granted, ProgPOW had other problems as well).
| bhaak wrote:
| Jed McCaleb, one of the founders of what would become Ripple,
| has still a few billions XRP left
| (https://cointelegraph.com/news/ripple-co-founder-jed-
| mccaleb...) and he is selling as fast as he is allowed to
| (http://jedmccaleb.com/blog/my-settlement-victory-with-
| ripple...).
| vmception wrote:
| Thats a good point, if demand remains the same.
|
| But otherwise this document spells out everything that
| Ripple/XRP critics have been trying to drill into XRP Army
| conscripts for half a decade.
|
| That Ripple is in the business of selling XRP and uses
| ambiguity between the context of "ripple" and deflection to say
| there are third parties using enough XRP to make it scarce in
| the future. When this was never happening, and to this day is
| not happening.
|
| The complaint mentions a third party that paid to get XRP this
| year to use a Ripple Labs product. They bought the XRP from
| Ripple to the tune of $70mm and immediately sold it on the
| public markets.
|
| I think the illusion is shattered with this complaint. But XRP
| should be able to retain its transfer usage, just back at 2013
| price levels.
| ehmmmmmmmm wrote:
| That would be kind of cool in a sense, because it would do
| exactly the opposite of what the SEC would want. The SEC may
| then start to realize that they don't have the power to control
| the crypto market, and that it's going to blow up on them every
| time they try to attack. The higher price could also be used to
| fund better lawyers and lobbying against the SEC.
|
| Not necessarily in support of Ripple specifically, but I do
| think having something that can actually challenge the SEC and
| reduce them to tears is a good thing. There are lots of things
| about the capital economy that could use change.
| ArtWomb wrote:
| For an illiquid commodity like gold, I could see this being
| true. But in the crypto markets, participants have plenty of
| other choices. More likely is the "fire sale" scenario that was
| so wonderfully depicted in the film "Margin Call". Early
| investors are willing to unload at pennies on the dollar just
| to survive another day ;)
|
| Looks like CrossTower has already de-listed XRP from its
| exchange. Incredible how fast information gets digested in
| crypto markets!
|
| https://thecryptoreport.com/an-sec-victory-in-ripple-case-wo...
| Scoundreller wrote:
| XRP holders: So, what you're telling me, is that the music is
| about to stop, and we're going to be left holding the biggest
| bag of odorous excrement ever assembled in the history of
| capitalism.
|
| You: I'm not sure that I would put it that way, but let me
| clarify using your analogy. What this model shows is the
| music, so to speak, just slowing. If the music were to stop,
| as you put it, then this model wouldn't even be close to that
| scenario. It would be considerably worse.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Gold futures are very liquid. They are as liquid as stocks.
| Any commodity future is much more liquid than any crypto.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| If history is any indicator, the fundamentals don't actually
| matter.
|
| The only things that matter are hype, and people buying/selling
| according to what people _think_ other people are going to do.
|
| Nearly every crypto-related story comes with narratives that
| it's good for the exchange rate for various reasons, but
| ultimately the price goes up (temporarily) because people
| expect other people to expect the price to go up and want to
| get ahead of it.
| dheera wrote:
| Yes, so much this. Fundamentals never mattered in crypto.
|
| The true winners of crypto will be the ones who can come up
| with better models of human nature and hype, and all the
| factors at play, and leverage that to their success, just
| like the true winners at casinos are those who can learn to
| count cards, except with crypto they won't be able to kick
| you out.
|
| It's also a market where market manipulation and insider
| trading is fair game, and that needs to be modelled in as
| well.
|
| It's an interesting time we live in, and it's an interesting
| anarchic economy with its own interesting set of problems to
| solve.
| WJW wrote:
| In the short term, the market is a voting machine. In the
| long term, it is a weighing machine. If there is "real" value
| there it will be reflected in the price and if there is not,
| that will be reflected in the price as well.
|
| The problem is that humans are impatient and even "short
| term" may be a couple of decades before it all shakes out.
| drcode wrote:
| I still think there's a pretty clear correlation between
| technical innovation of cryptocurrencies and their market
| cap, even though there are certainly exceptions to this rule
| (ripple being the prime exemplar)
| Causality1 wrote:
| XRP has the highest market cap? I think I've seen more places
| that take Dogecoin then take XRP.
| pluc wrote:
| It says third highest in the third sentence of article.
| qes wrote:
| Market cap doesn't mean much at all in crypto. XRP's is high
| because the circulating supply is 45 billion XRP - 2500 times
| more than BTC, 400 times more than ETH, etc.
|
| I could create a blockchain and issue a quintillion coins and
| if I manage to get it listed and sell some for a fraction of a
| penny it'll have a bigger market cap than the rest of crypto
| combined.
| ur-whale wrote:
| Ripple is everything you _don 't_ want in a cryptocurrency:
| - centralized (as witnessed by the fact that the SEC has an
| actual target to go after) - "pre-mined" (initial Ripple
| crowd gave themselves everything and once in a while toss a
| handful of XRP to the plebs) - controlled by scammers
|
| I'm very glad the ecosystem is doing what it's supposed to:
| weeding out the weak and ill-formed.
| eMGm4D0zgUAVXc7 wrote:
| You summarized this very well!
|
| A lot of post-Bitcoin "cryptocurrencies" are nothing but a
| cargo cult: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qmlYe2KS0-Y
| morelisp wrote:
| Your comment has an off-by-one error.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| Is there an example of a cryptocurrency company that _isn 't_
| centralized?
|
| You need to use centralized exchanges in order to buy in or
| cash out. Even small entities trading on platforms like
| LocalBitcoins need to adhere to KYC laws.
|
| If you were to use cryptocurrency as actual money, I can't see
| it being cost effective, legal or convenient to only trade with
| fly-by-night currency exchangers in South America in order to
| buy and sell cryptocurrency "anonymously".
| dannyw wrote:
| Bitcoin has centralized exchange _s_ , but no centralized
| organization or _exchange_.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| Bitcoin isn't a company, though.
| [deleted]
| ogogmad wrote:
| I once bought BTC from an ATM. Paid cash. Absolutely no KYC.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| Those have cameras and if you look into darknet busts, a
| lot of people were de-anonymized through Bitcoin ATMs.
| lbarrow wrote:
| The US Securities and Exchange Commission is the crypto
| "ecosystem"?
| tw25510979 wrote:
| If I understand the GP's point correctly, the SEC would be
| helping to keep the weak and ill-informed around.
| huntermeyer wrote:
| What does GP mean?
| zenexer wrote:
| All of the bullets in your comment explain why Ripple is bad,
| and you've somehow twisted that logic into justifying that it's
| good with your last sentence. It's elitist at best, outright
| evil at worst. I'm not really sure what goal it serves.
|
| If your point is that we should just "take all the warning
| labels off of everything and let the situation resolve itself,"
| no thanks. I don't have the time to research the exact origin
| of everything I put in my mouth. I have to trust that when I
| buy food, someone out there has at least made an attempt to
| minimize the chances that it contains loads of mercury.
|
| Are you running extensive tests on everything you eat and
| drink? The air you breathe? Sure, companies might not want to
| ruin their reputation by selling such goods, but, then again,
| we have Ripple. So which is it?
|
| Or maybe I just need to be more selective about which companies
| I choose, right? Despite seeing exit scam after exit scam,
| incompetent blunder after blunder, that will surely protect me
| better than the SEC et al doing their damn jobs.
|
| No. I want oversight. Sure, that doesn't mean I can let my
| guard down; I still have to be selective. But at least there's
| a pretty low chance that the brand-name toothpaste I use
| tonight--or the <insert snake oil here> I use instead--is
| slowly killing me.
| Isamu wrote:
| Pretty sure the last sentence was a joke. I know with
| cryptocurrency it is pretty hard to tell.
| drchopchop wrote:
| ... but it didn't. The SEC did. XRP has a $40B "market cap",
| which sums up the crypto mentality in general.
| rhacker wrote:
| Meh, I don't really get why people think "market cap" is the
| total valuation of something. If I sold Bob a billion XRP for
| 1 penny, then I sold Tim 1 XRP for $40, then told Bob not to
| sell, and Tim can sell his for $40 (because he wants to at
| least get that much back), then XRP's "market cap" is worth
| $40 Billion, but in reality it's probably worth $40.
|
| I get that there is a lot more money in it than that, but
| let's be honest about something, if half the people sold
| Bitcoin tonight - they HAVE to get out today, it's "market
| cap" would likely go from nearly half-trillion to probably
| $300M overnight. Even though technically it should only cut
| in half right?
| arcticbull wrote:
| There's no such thing as market cap for a currency, but
| nobody knows what on earth a crypto unit is supposed to be,
| do or mean, so it gets weird little slices of each finance
| category.
| LudwigNagasena wrote:
| This applies to every market cap? If every Apple stock
| holder would try to sell it today, the market cap would
| plummet.
| whatshisface wrote:
| > _If every Apple stock holder would try to sell it
| today, the market cap would plummet._
|
| This is often repeated but not necessarily true. I don't
| own a particularly large amount of Apple stock, but if
| the price dropped even a little bit, and if I knew the
| drop was due to nothing more than this weird thing where
| everyone was selling for some reason, I might decide to
| own more. If aliens sent out a mind control signal that
| caused every Apple shareholder to start selling, the
| buyers (whoever they were, maybe the aliens? ;) ) would
| compete with each other to buy.
|
| To give you a concrete example, let's say I am the only
| owner in the world of a flying car. One day, I decide to
| sell it. 100% of the owners of flying cars have decided
| to sell, but the price would clearly not drop to zero!
| The idea that everyone selling implies the price will
| drop to zero applies to pure Keynesian beauty contests
| where 100% of the value is in owning something perceived
| to be valuable. For currencies that is completely true,
| but for companies that is less true.
| boh wrote:
| > This is often repeated but not necessarily true.
|
| This is always true. It doesn't have to go to zero to
| qualify as plummeting.
| GoblinSlayer wrote:
| Nocoiners will blame technology for this.
| pluc wrote:
| It doesn't matter how good the technology is if it's controlled
| by scammers.
| risho wrote:
| who cares what nocoiners think? bitcoin used to be considered a
| ponzi scheme for terrorists and criminals. short term sentiment
| doesn't really matter. in the long run the actual technology
| will speak for itself whether that be good or bad.
| fabianhjr wrote:
| Dupe: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25510945
| davidwparker wrote:
| Recent discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25502764
| cwkoss wrote:
| Been following cryptocurrency for almost a decade now. I would
| generalize that XRP is an asset that is primarily purchased by
| speculators with sour grapes that they missed <$1 Bitcoins, and
| hope to see the same sort of returns despite the significant
| differences in technology and organizational structure.
|
| I don't feel like there is much 'smart money' investing in XRP,
| so I think increased regulatory oversight is probably beneficial
| here.
| risho wrote:
| good. i'm amazed this didn't happen sooner. i have no idea how
| they can call eos and the dao a security offering and not xrp.
| xrp is one of the most obvious securities ever created.
| Melting_Harps wrote:
| No surprise, Stellar was a pre-mined shix-coin, you have no idea
| how hard it was for me (Bitcoiner) at IBM listening to those
| imbeciles go on and on about the 'panacea' they were going to
| build with solidity (the worst most convoluted language I've ever
| encountered), hyperledger patchwork solutions and operating on
| ripple and stellar [0].
|
| Those guys seriously had no idea what they were talking about 95%
| of the time, and despite being being one of the few that had both
| a Consultant with (at the time 8 years in Crytocurrency) and
| Developer roles prior to having my own fintech startup in Bitcoin
| for 4 years before that I was always the 'debbie downer' when I
| tried to explain the limitations of this technology and brought
| people back to Earth. Especially at the time as we were dealing
| with the war leading up to Segwit and Bcash hardfork and barely
| starting to make inroads with Lightning Network proofs of concept
| in the Bitcoin community. I'm glad I left when I did, but IBM had
| everything going for it in that space and despite that they still
| managed to cock things up because they're too blinded by their
| old contracting business model instead of actual innovation. They
| lost their vision a long time ago, and subsisting on Government
| and Military contracts is what probably made them this
| complacent.
|
| In short, now after ~10 years in Crypto you'd be an idiot to deal
| with xrp and I don't feel bad for anyone that gets burned; I'd
| prefer it died without with no State intervention, but as some of
| you may know we've dealt with a lot of that in Bitcoin and only
| came out stronger while this may kill this project entirely. Just
| keep that in mind when you see why Bitcoin keeps defying every
| possible analyzer's projections and why even its main detractors
| (JP Morgan et al) have had to eat their weight in crow and are
| trying to get in after having ruined the banking Industry yet
| again with their largess and corrupt business model.
|
| 0: https://thexrpdaily.com/2019/01/27/stellar-partner-ibm-
| confi...
| LittlePeter wrote:
| > Bitcoin keeps defying every possible analyzer's projections
|
| It does not. Several people claimed Bitcoin would be in the
| $100K-$1,000K range by now.
| cblconfederate wrote:
| Stellar is being sued too?
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| Bitcoin still has serious environmental costs regardless of its
| use case. (Which for a currency the 7 TPS cap makes it a joke
| and as an asset has crazy volatility.)
| geraldbauer wrote:
| FYI: I collect a best of crypto quotes over at open blockchains,
| see https://github.com/openblockchains/crypto-quotes
|
| To quote Nouriel Roubini, Economist:
|
| No use ever, past, present and future for XRP and Ripple
| products... it is already flopping after spending a fortune and
| printing a huge amount of totally useless XRP. (Now the XRP army
| of Twitter trolls, bots, hired guns and zealots will attack
| again...)
| vrperson wrote:
| OK, but you can find such quotes for everything. "We estimate
| the global demand to be about 3 computers" "nobody will need
| more than 16KB of memory" and so on.
|
| (I'm not a fan of XRP, anyways)
| ogogmad wrote:
| I've just read the Wikipedia page on Ripple. Can somebody explain
| in clear terms what the point of XRP is supposed to be?
|
| Is it supposed to be a faster Bitcoin? Is it supposed to be a
| less Chinese-controlled (supposedly) cryptocurrency than Bitcoin?
|
| Let's for the sake of discussion give them the benefit of the
| doubt.
| ur-whale wrote:
| Ripple is centralized. It's basically another PayPal.
| ogogmad wrote:
| OK, but I'm asking why they need a cryptocurrency. Paypal
| certainly doesn't need one.
| eli wrote:
| Why does anyone start a cryptocurrency? To get rich, of
| course
| mtnGoat wrote:
| this is probably the best answer OP is going to get.
|
| i doubt there was much logic applied, past the idea of
| getting rich, to the few thousand crypto currencies that
| were born in the last decade.
| contingencies wrote:
| Other comments are incorrect.
|
| As I recall Ripple was _originally_ a network-of-issuers for
| multiple issuer-specific tokens model, it wasn 't supposed to
| be a single-issuer/single-token. The XRP token itself was never
| intended to be the asset, it was only a cost-token that fuelled
| the exchange of other issuers' tokens, similar to offline
| community exchange systems (CES). Ripple the _company_ post-
| dates Ripple the _project_ , which AFAIK was originally solidly
| non-commercial in motivation. I was part of the early
| commercialization of Ripple sort of by proxy while building
| Kraken, although I was opposed to the move. Aside from the
| money people, there were some good engineers involved with the
| right intentions, drawing from solid experience and with an
| awareness of CES and attempts at networking thereof.
|
| The whole central banking thing was a post-facto marketing push
| as crypto went mainstream AFAIK. I believe some of the people
| changed at some point, but I didn't have time to focus on
| Ripple and never met them. I believe the Ripple narrative
| mirrors my overall experience with crypto: nice technical ideas
| by people with positive social visions, suddenly people get
| paid to do it, utopian visions rapidly replaced with money
| people, regulatory ingress effectively destroys the USP, whole
| thing turns in to a scam, regulations become warped in to a
| system of protectionism and government effectively in cahoots
| with the dominant players. A real education in human behavior.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| The SEC is clearly suing Ripple _the company_ here.
|
| It's true that Ripple was something else before the Ripple
| company showed up, but that's largely irrelevant. The second
| half of your comment doesn't really contradict anything else
| here. Specifically:
|
| > whole thing turns in to a scam
|
| Is perhaps the most concise summary.
|
| Not really helpful to try to bring up what Ripple was before
| it turned into the thing that made it popular with
| cryptocurrency enthusiasts and, eventually, the SEC.
| momothereal wrote:
| My understanding: Ripple is a company that aims to build a
| faster bank transfer protocol (faster than SWIFT, for example).
|
| To achieve that speed, banks transfer a digital currency (XRP)
| issued by Ripple instead of traditional currencies. It takes a
| few seconds for XRP transactions to settle, instead of days for
| traditional currencies via SWIFT.
|
| The value of this currency is decentralized, in the sense that
| people trade it with other currencies (which is also how
| Bitcoin, Ethereum etc. are valued).
|
| In the eyes of the SEC, the fact that XRP is directly issued by
| Ripple makes it similar to issuing shares. Even if Ripple
| doesn't control the value of the shares (XRP), they still
| manage the supply.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _It takes a few seconds for XRP transactions to settle,
| instead of days for traditional currencies via SWIFT_
|
| Just want to note that interbank transfers via Fedwire are
| (a) close to free and (b) instantaneous.
| momothereal wrote:
| Fedwire is instantaneous for US domestic transfers, whereas
| international Fedwire transfers to non-Fedwire banks still
| rely on SWIFT as far as I know. The Ripple company offers
| solutions to replace SWIFT using XRP as the exchange
| currency.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _international Fedwire transfers to non-Fedwire banks
| still rely on SWIFT as far as I know_
|
| International wires are a bit of a mess. But there are
| alternatives to SWIFT.
|
| Also, SWIFT is just a messaging protocol. The actual
| settlement is handled separately. This was Ripple's
| original pitch, but it changed along the way.
| echelon wrote:
| This sounds exactly like Facebook / Mark Zuckerberg's Libra
| cryptocurrency.
| TacoToni wrote:
| Which has now been rebranded to Diem.
| momothereal wrote:
| The currencies (Diem and XRP) would be similar in nature,
| since they're not mined but centrally issued, and their
| value is determined by a combination of factors (the
| issuance, decay, and trading).
|
| As far as I know Libra/Diem is more customer-facing,
| whereas Ripple is mostly marketed to banks for faster
| international transfers.
| 1f60c wrote:
| And Diem is/will be a stablecoin backed by USD (I think?)
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| The narrative was that Ripple was going to become _the_
| protocol used by banks to transfer money around, especially
| across borders.
|
| The pitch was that Ripple, the company, was going to sell XRP,
| the cryptocurrency, to the general public in order to fund all
| of their growth. Then, when banks ostensibly adopted XRP for
| their banking needs, the banks would be forced to pay
| exorbitant amounts of money to buy the artificially-scarce XRP
| from all of the speculators who got in early.
|
| Everyone conveniently ignored the fact that large banks are not
| dumb, and they had no real reason to use a currency literally
| invented out of thin air to power their transactions. If banks
| really wanted to use cryptocurrency to trade among themselves,
| they'd obviously just roll their own cryptocurrency. Or they'd
| just copy-paste the permissively licensed Ripple code and call
| it something like BankCoin. No one could ever give me a good
| reason why banks would have no choice but to buy up arbitrary
| XRP from general public speculators.
| shrimpx wrote:
| Can someone clarify why XRP is considered a security by the SEC
| but bitcoin and ethereum are not? Is it something intrinsic in
| the tech, or is it just that XRP is "managed" by Ripple, a
| company, whereas BTC/ETH are not?
| __s wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25511198
|
| > Unlike Bitcoin, which issues new currency units through
| mining, XRP is issued by Ripple
|
| Nobody can "print money" with bitcoin. That isn't the case with
| Ripple
| ur-whale wrote:
| Also: who would the SEC sue in the case of Bitcoin?
| xalava wrote:
| This has been clarified in prior statements:
|
| The SEC does not considers Bitcoin a security, as it's
| "decentralised enough". Nobody is running Bitcoin alone,
| selling them alone...
|
| The Ethereum sale was probably a security offering, but it is
| now "decentralised enough" too for the same reasons.
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