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Bitcoin still rolls out upgrades occasionally. At this point Ethereum doesn't really have "a dev team." There are about ten independent client teams, who have

Bitcoin still rolls out upgrades occasionally. At this point Ethereum doesn't really have "a dev team." There are about ten independent client teams, who have public meetings to come to agreement on upgrades, plus an open research community. When you say that an ETH buyer is "expecting to profit from the efforts of the dev team" which wasn't the case in 2018, are you talking about proof of stake? Because it's not all that different from proof of work. You run a client, process transactions, and get rewarded for doing that. Instead of buying a server rack you stake some ETH, but what you get rewarded for is running the protocol. You don't get rewarded for just holding ETH. Unless the value of ETH goes up, but that's the same with Bitcoin and with Ethereum in 2018. The Howey test, incidentally, is also about an investment contract. That's why an equity is a security, but a bar of gold is not, even if you bought the gold as an investment. Lack of contract is why the SEC lost their case against Ripple recently.

lmm 3y ago
> When you say that an ETH buyer is "expecting to profit from the efforts of the dev team" which wasn't the case in 2018, are you talking about proof of stake? Not proof of stake qua proof of stake, but the fact that substantial changes to ethereum (like proof of stake) - things that change the usability of the network, and so could be reasonably expected to change the value of ethereum tokens - are still being worked on. > The Howey test, incidentally, is also about an investment contract. No, it's the definition of an investment contract. If it included whether something was an investment contract that would be circular. > That's why an equity is a security, but a bar of gold is not, even if you bought the gold as an investment. No, the reason gold isn't a security is there's no common enterprise and, more importantly, no efforts of others. You might buy it as an investment, but the investment isn't because you think the gold devs are going to add new features that make gold more useful. > Lack of contract is why the SEC lost their case against Ripple recently. Whatever you think about Ripple or cryptocurrency in general, that ruling was just utterly bizarre. You can make reasonable arguments for why these things aren't securities (even if I don't agree with you) but that judgement wasn't it. It's not a precedent for anything, it's just crazy.
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lmm 3y ago

> When you say that an ETH buyer is "expecting to profit from the efforts of the dev team" which wasn't the case in 2018, are you talking about proof of stake? Not proof of stake qua proof of stake, but the fact that substantial changes to ethereum (like proof of stake) - things that change the usability of the network, and so could be reasonably expected to change the value of ethereum tokens - are still being worked on. > The Howey test, incidentally, is also about an investment contract. No, it's the definition of an investment contract. If it included whether something was an investment contract that would be circular. > That's why an equity is a security, but a bar of gold is not, even if you bought the gold as an investment. No, the reason gold isn't a security is there's no common enterprise and, more importantly, no efforts of others. You might buy it as an investment, but the investment isn't because you think the gold devs are going to add new features that make gold more useful. > Lack of contract is why the SEC lost their case against Ripple recently. Whatever you think about Ripple or cryptocurrency in general, that ruling was just utterly bizarre. You can make reasonable arguments for why these things aren't securities (even if I don't agree with you) but that judgement wasn't it. It's not a precedent for anything, it's just crazy.

deleted 3y ago
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