The SEC doesn't really care how the payment is carried out, if that's the only difference. The actual medium of exchange could be dollar bills, gold coins, euro

The SEC doesn't really care how the payment is carried out, if that's the only difference. The actual medium of exchange could be dollar bills, gold coins, euros, baseball cards, rare watches, gemstones, bitcoin, used books, etc. (Though some of those are treated differently for capital-gains purposes.)