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Comment by Kretinsky | Hacker News Reader

What is the crime here? Crypto trading is done by willing individuals, no one is forcing you to participate in this market.

Moreover, “regulation” is not a synonym of “good and righteous”, especially in the US, where things are quite shady when you look from the outside. FTX was the dear of the regulators, and ended us as a massive scam. The recurrent crises in the banking sector show that regulation is, frankly, quite useless.

Furthermore, the US has a long history of using “regulation” as a way to do financial repression against its population and other countries. Crypto, among all the scams and dubious projects, is one of the last harbingers of financial freedom in a world that gets darker and darker every day on that aspect.

Don't believe me? Well, the day you'll be on the longer end of the stick, you'll understand.

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> What is the crime here?

https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/securities_act_of_1933

But you bring up great points, and that's exactly why we use a political system called a "representative democracy" where if you don't like the laws, you can vote for those that align with your worldview, you can run for office yourself, or you can lobby your politicians to change them.

(Breaking the law is unfortunately not on that list.)

No. The laws don't expire; we are mostly ruled by laws that we were not in any way represented for.

Everyone who was of voting age who could have voted for senators who ratified the income tax amendment is dead now. There is no person now living under the sixteenth amendment that was involved in its passage.

None of us alive today were voting for congressional reps back in '33; correspondingly the securities act applying to us is not in any way related to representative democracy. It might as well be dictatorial edict for all of our involvement.

Are you trying to argue that, under your proposed system of laws, we would need to re-litigate (for example) murder or arson for every new generation? Seems a bit silly. Either way, precedent can be freely overturned, so the Securities Act isn't immutable. It's just that most people still think it's a good idea.

Most people aren't aware of securities regulation at all.

Note that I didn't propose any alternate system, I just pointed out that the majority of the laws we live under were not a result of our being represented in any way.

Yes, all laws should have expiration dates built in, and the more controversial the law is the shorter that expiration should be.

A law passed 51-49 should not persist after that legislative period has passed.

A law passed 100-0 may be reasonable to persist for 50 years.

Thinking that the federal state, in the USA, is a representative democracy is delusional. It's an oligarchy, where power is shared between different interests coalition, such as the war industry, the financial sector, the ruling families, and so on.

"Vote for those who align your worldviews" in a bipartisan political system is laughable, same as "lobbying". JPMorgan can indeed lobby to protect its interests, regular citizens can't, or have to waste an amount of energy so high, for results so meaningless while doing it that it's useless in the end. Hence, the real citizens are the ones who have access to the system, be them corporations or oligarchs.

But to go back to the original argument, what's the problem here? All of this is virtual and doesn't affect the real world. Unlike the US banking system that needs taxpayer's money to bail itself out every 15 years like clockwork, the crypto space lives on its own.

Truth is, this crackdown is quite beneficial to the ecosystem, as all devs are leaving the US, or will have to. In the end we'll have a much more balanced tech sector, unlike now where the USA imposes its cultural norms and practices on the rest of the world.

Should an individual be allowed to choose the risks they want to take with their own money? Yes or no. “But we voted for it” doesn’t change the fact that I don’t consent to something on the basis that enough people disagree with me.

> What is the crime here?

Offering unregistered securities, in apparent violation of the Securities Exchange Act. It's astounding how people think they can skirt the law without even familiarizing themselves with the law.

Crypto didn't exist when securities laws were created.

lawyers hate this one simple trick! they apparently can't craft laws that are not made immediately obselete by new things.

Just like your house didn't exist when laws against breaking into it were created. I'm not sure what the aim of your comment is, but what it appears to demonstrate is ignorance of the law. Rather ironic given what you were directly responding to.

> The recurrent crises in the banking sector show that regulation is, frankly, quite useless.

Car accident related deaths show that seat belts are, frankly, quite useless.

There is a clear causation and correlation between belts and accidents. As for regulation and crises, the current one shows that it's quite unclear.

What's happening, however is that, since the Patriot act, financial freedoms and the right to privacy became a meme. The state and the banking sector has more and more to say about how you spend your money and earn it. Fact is that a totalitarian regime would have to vote very few laws to enforce itself.

Crypto is a backstop against this.

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