Re: Potential list of securities in the US [was: Unlawful Unregistered Securities, DID and VC]

so 17. 6. 2023 v 13:14 odesílatel Daniel Hardman <daniel.hardman@gmail.com>
napsal:

> I agree with several waypoints in your chain of logic, Melvin.
> Specifically, I agree that allegations have been made and are being
> adjudicated, that your list of allegation targets seems accurate, and that
> W3C should be careful not to be tied to illegal activity.
>
> However, "tied to" is a pretty subjective phrase. It strains credulity in
> my mind to imagine that W3C could be accused of endorsing or promoting a
> token when it simply records the existence of published work by other
> entities -- entities who happen to be using a particular blockchain for an
> activity that either involves no tokens at all, or that merely consumes
> them. This is especially true when blockchains have been a major phenomenon
> in tech for the past decade plus, neither W3C publications nor the
> publications W3C cites mention tokens, and before allegations have been
> adjudicated. Plus, I think Kyle's logic about jurisdictions deserving equal
> (non-)reaction from the W3C is pretty strong. If different jurisdictions
> are coming to different conclusions, what is the argument for the W3C
> privileging some (likely) conclusions over others?
>
> Where I think you could make a stronger argument is if you grounded it not
> in legality but in ethics. I think perception of tokens by many is that
> they are unsavory, regardless of whether they are legal. And that's true
> across jurisdictions. But this point is also controversial, and I think not
> all tokens have the same ethical profile, so it's only an iffy argument for
> me.
>
> But suppose I were to grant the soundness of the preceding logic in some
> form. I still find the conclusion unwarranted, because it seems to depend
> on the idea that parties using a DID in a token-associated ecosystem are
> doing something that is either illegal or unethical. Under any form of the
> analysis above, I don't think either would be true. Aren't the legal
> allegations and the ethical concerns about the *selling* of tokens rather
> than *buying with* tokens? As I understand it, the people that prosecutors
> are looking to shut down (or ethicists are criticizing) are those
> building/promoting/selling the token, and not their putative victims (which
> is the status that DID owners on such networks would have). N'est ce pas?
>
> A DID method spec that describes how to create DIDs within
> token-associated ecosystem X should not be equated with an attempt to sell
> X's tokens. If anything, it is the opposite: *an attempt to deliver
> genuine value to someone who chose to enter ecosystem X for other reasons*.
> Should that, too, be illegal/unethical? (Or are you arguing that people
> will enter X purely to get a DID? Given our registry with 160+
> alternatives, many of them free, that seems highly unbelievable...)
> Further, it could be argued that a DID method for X actually provides a
> migration path for X's putative victims to leave that ecosystem. All they
> have to do is prove their control of did:X, then prove their control of
> non-token-oriented did:Y, then start using did:Y. The interoperability of
> DID methods thus lessens the harm to victims. If we remove did:X from our
> registry, this benefit disappears.
>
> Surely delivering value and lessening harm are not what W3C must distance
> itself from...
>

Thank you, Daniel, for your insightful point. The intersection of legal and
ethical considerations is indeed significant in this context. For a concise
discussion on this topic, I would recommend this short 2 minute clip:

https://twitter.com/VandelayBTC/status/1493310858147123201