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Comment by wonderwonder | Hacker News Reader

This is a pretty interesting read. There is definitely a similarity to crypto currency here as well. Wonder why the SEC does not categorize airline points as securities and come after them...

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See the Howey Test: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/h/howey-test.asp

Airline Miles don't grant you access to a portion of the profits from the airline. They aren't an investment. They are a currency for future travel.

They're a liability of the airline, and they're an asset of the customer, but they are not an investment, because they can only go down in value, not up.

Same as gift cards.

Sometimes the dollar price of a flight goes up but the points price stays the same = points went up.

That you can make money through arbitrage is not the definition of a security. See my link above.

Does the CC companies buying these and then granting them to card holders as a reward qualify or affect the test at all?

Because people don't buy FF points as a speculative investment. If you said "I am starting wonderwonder's airline. I will only sell tickets based on FFPs. I am currently selling FFPs at a discount to what I will sell them at later and they are transferable. You should buy them now to resell them later" they would be securities.

>Because people don't buy FF points as a speculative investment

Why not? People do it with forever stamps.

>If you said "I am starting wonderwonder's airline. I will only sell tickets based on FFPs. I am currently selling FFPs at a discount to what I will sell them at later and they are transferable. You should buy them now to resell them later" they would be securities.

Might as well be the way the USPS advertises forever stamps.

People buy stamps that are guaranteed to rise at less than the rate of inflation as an investment? And the USPS advertises it that way??

I'm not convinced. I would need some evidence of that.

(I am aware that stamps may be used in prison as a currency, but that's a special case.)

You can sell forever stamps. You can't sell airline points.

You can generally only get frequently flyer points by flying on an airline, and even then airlines sometimes sell points for money and it’s always a bad deal.

I get them on several of my credit cards as rewards. I have the option of getting FF points or something else.

Yes you can use other rewards programs to get frequent flyer points but you could also get dollars instead if you wanted

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