> No, he's not right because his entire argument was a straw man
Respectfully, there is no straw man there.
[A straw man is when someone attempts to replace your argument with something else that's easier to argue with](https://laurencetennant.com/bonds/bdksucks.html https://laurencetennant.com/bonds/bdksucks.html).
He claimed that you are making the claim that someone can merely opt out of regulation by deciding that it does not apply to them. That is what it would mean to "soverign citizen" things - those folks are people who appear to genuinely believe that if they state, in their opinion clearly, why the law doesn't apply to them, that it really doesn't. They frequently get dragged to jail in chains, ranting about how the tassles on a flag mean it's an admiralty flag, and as a result, some string of hedge logic means it doesn't apply on a technicality.
I agree with his impression of you. You appear to be making random, incorrect, unjustified claims, and then drawing from those claims the impression that the law doesn't apply in context, and the actual people who run this part of the legal system are too dumb to understand what you understand, and aren't the right people to handle it.
Here are some literal quotes of you, which I believe support this perspective on what you're saying.
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> A security is by definition a tradable instrument. Your bank account is not tradable
Three things:
1. That is not the correct definition of a security, no. It both gets things wrong, cites irrelevant things as if they were key, makes correct factual claims in a way that makes clear they're not well understood, and omits defining details. This like saying "a car is a wooden box with a radio and a minimum of two wheels, at least one of which a steering wheel."
2. Yes, your bank account very much is tradeable. I would say "please go learn about securitization," but since you're trying to define what a security is, it seems likely you'll say "I already know about it," unaware that securitization is the process by which something that didn't used to be a security is turned into one, and that the United States has had two different financial crises in the last 20 years caused directly by bank accounts being tradeable.
3. The sub-average NPR listener can explain this. Maybe befriend one and ask.
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> trying to claim that I was sovereign citizen-ing financial regulation.
You're the guy saying "The SEC is wrong and they don't even do this and here's why and I have no reference and when you say I'm wrong I'm going to ignore you and make fun of you and not address your points."
I guess I don't think he's incorrect about you, frankly.
Vaccine deniers also get angry when they're compared to Flat Earthers, because they're so busy telling themselves that they're right that they never bother to learn why people are taking the social cues that they're taking.
I suppose it's possible that you know more about financial regulation than the SEC, even though your claims stand in direct contrast to recent high profile history
Would you like to provide some evidence, or at least stop throwing around the misapplied fallacies?
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> The Coinbase CEO is not an idiot.
So, there are three obvious possible ways to take this.
1. You think the SEC are idiots
2. You think that when the head of a shady company criticizes the financial regulator who's supposed to prevent them from doing something illegal, it's because he's smart, and not because he's a snake oil salesman
3. You didn't know Coinbase has a history of breaking financial regulations
Is it one of those, or a different thing?
> He has been very clear
When you said "the Coinbase CEO has been very clear," what I actually heard was you yelling "bitconnect" with a Spanish accent.
Try to keep up. The embattled CEO of a shady company with a history of legal problems, who's just been notified by a regulator that /yet/ /again/ they're breaking the law?
Most of us don't care how clear they've been.
If you go back, you can find people talking about how the statistics on Theranos are completely impossible for the last ten years. How the size of sample they're talking about drawing is so small that frequently there won't actually be any blood cells in it to get data from.
How it's a criminally obvious fraud from freshman year statistics.
And you'll find investors proving H L Mencken right, the entire way.
"Elizabeth has been very clear."
That's nice.
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> that this would be a regulated instrument.
That isn't how those words work.
You are very easily fooled.
(continued in self-reply because it's too long for one comment. i wish these pages wouldn't do this.)
I've seen more coherent rebuttals from schizophrenic bus stop vagrants. Jesus, how is anybody even supposed to read that? I have never once claimed that this product is exempt from regulation, merely that the SEC is not the one to regulate it. And I have been pretty damn consistent in saying that this clearly belongs with FINRA and/or FDIC. No amount of rambling about HL Menken and imagined interpretations of words will change that.
> I have been pretty damn consistent in saying that this clearly belongs with FINRA and/or FDIC
Naw dawg. FDIC isn't a regulator. You were perhaps thinking of the OCC? Their jurisdiction is just over banks.
And you have to understand that the entire framework of securities & exchange law sets up SEC as the regulator of all that shit. It's, like, explicitly laid out in the 33/34/40 Acts.
Wall St. guys (exchanges & broker dealers) have managed to carve out a little relief and petitioned SEC to allow them to regulate themselves for some annoying bureaucratic stuff.... but for anything major, the SEC steps right in and asserts their jurisdiction.
For example, if you're arguing that cryptocurrency-related lending is in fact some sort of securities lending, then it clearly falls under Rule 15c3-3 under the '34 Act.... which, you will note, is promulgated and administrated by the SEC. It's what they do. The SEC gives marching orders to FINRA, and then FINRA codifies some policies & procedures. If FINRA is fucking up, or they don't want to handle it, then the buck still stops right on the Commission's desk.
> And I have been pretty damn consistent in saying that this clearly belongs with FINRA and/or FDIC
I guess I'm gonna take the SEC guy on this instead of the dude with the insults and the swearing.
Again, my belief is that this tone, rather than the content, is why the other person made the comparison of you that you seem to be reacting to.
> He claimed that you are making the claim that someone can merely opt out of regulation by deciding that it does not apply to them.
You have located the strawman.