<story><title>SEC Shuts Down Munchee ICO</title><url>https://techcrunch.com/2017/12/12/sec-shuts-down-munchee-ico/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>zachruss92</author><text>Honestly, i&amp;#x27;m kind of annoyed by everyone offering an ICO for [insert irrelevant product here]. It&amp;#x27;s creating a misleading advertising scheme built on top of a current tech _craze_ that will likely leave a lot of &amp;quot;investors&amp;quot; out of money.&lt;p&gt;The problem is that you&amp;#x27;re giving money to a relatively unknown company while speculating that the company will create inherent value. Unlike with stocks, you don&amp;#x27;t have ownership in the company or any voting rights. There is nothing stopping the company&amp;#x27;s creators from distributing the ICO money to themselves (there might be a board, but since the company isn&amp;#x27;t public who knows who the board is).&lt;p&gt;In this case the SEC is right to step in so there aren&amp;#x27;t a ton of unregulated securities going around and a lot of consumers potentially getting screwed.&lt;p&gt;Even with cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, it can be scary. You&amp;#x27;re literally getting into the ForEx market, which is known to be one of the riskiest markets in existence. With other currencies, at least they&amp;#x27;re backed by a government that (at least at least attempts) to regulate it&amp;#x27;s value and protect it from manipulation. With bitcoin, I saw that 40% of all coins in existence are owned by less that 1,000 people. How do we know that the current price inflations aren&amp;#x27;t a manipulation (or collusion) to jack up the price, sell for USD, then crash the market? It&amp;#x27;s not illegal&amp;#x2F;collusion because Bitcoin isn&amp;#x27;t regulated.&lt;p&gt;This is definitely a rant, but I have some serious concerns as to where this market is going. Would love to hear other&amp;#x27;s thoughts.</text></comment>
<story><title>SEC Shuts Down Munchee ICO</title><url>https://techcrunch.com/2017/12/12/sec-shuts-down-munchee-ico/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>azernik</author><text>Related to this bigger HN submission from yesterday (&amp;quot;Statement on Cryptocurrencies and Initial Coin Offerings&amp;quot;): &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=15902054&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=15902054&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;That statement was released on the same day as the Munchee decision, and the Munchee decision is linked from the statement&lt;p&gt;Context (the Munchee decision is in footnote 6): &amp;quot;I urge market professionals, including securities lawyers, accountants and consultants, to read closely the investigative report we released earlier this year (the “21(a) Report”)[5] and review our subsequent enforcement actions.[6]&amp;quot;</text></comment>