Telegram v. SEC saga is already 2 years old but it continues to inspire controversies in medias and to attract our community’s attention.
As we all know SEC claims that Telegram “failed to register their offers and sales of Grams, which are securities, in violation of the registration provisions of the Securities Act of 1933.”
This statement underlines the glaring deficiencies of the financial industry’s current regulatory environment, which is still based on an ancient episode (1946) when “the Supreme Court of the United States held that the offer of a land sales and service contract was an “investment contract”.
It’s quite amazing how much damage Floridian citrus groves can do to the cause of making people’s life better when backed up by power hungry government’s bureaucracy reinforced by political expedience and corporate lobbying.
As we all know, this infamous holding states that “an investment contract for purposes of the Securities Act means a contract, transaction or scheme whereby a person invests his money in a common enterprise and is led to expect profits solely from the efforts of the promoter or a third party, it being immaterial whether the shares in the enterprise are evidenced by formal certificates or by nominal interests in the physical assets employed in the enterprise.”
Obviously, with such broadly defined scopes almost everything can be classified as a “security” being it TON, EOS or your pop’s collection of comics book.
Moreover, ‘legal professionals’ are now treating technologies indiscriminately as a “Pandora box” from one side and as a source of unlimited ransoms from the other. As a result, we’ve got the “rulings” which are positioned as far from the true ‘justice’ (if it’s ever existed) as from the common sense.
The New York Southern District Court has just proved this theorem again: “Telegram does not show how withholding the TON Wallet from self-reported U.S. users, who are otherwise anonymous and could simply disclaim having a U.S.-based address, would be efficacious or enforceable. Therefore, any restriction as to whom a foreign Initial Purchaser could resell Grams would be of doubtful real-world enforceability.”
As a result after several years of active development Telegram Open Network was stopped few days before its official launch.
After more than five years (most actively, of course, since 2017) of our industry being suppressed and its actors persecuted by all forms of governments I do not think that there are some doubts left that it’s the major cause of ridiculously slow adaption of the most advanced technology the financial world has ever known.
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