Jesse from CoinList & Protocol Labs here -- completely agree that following securities regulation is an especially great idea. Unfortunately doing that correctly can be really challenging. Despite several misleading doom-and-gloom articles written today (http://fortune.com/2017/07/25/sec-says-digital-tokens-are-se...) the SEC has not said that all tokens are securities. Rather, application tokens are a promising new technology that enable all kinds of use-cases, each one unique from the next, and each having a unique 'regulation profile'. It would be very short-sighted to apply broad sweeping legislation and with this ruling, it's clear that the SEC also feels the same.
Just like mifeng mentioned, it really is a facts and circumstances determination per token. Given we had to build all of the token sale scaffolding (legal, tech, etc.) for Filecoin, it made sense to open this up to other technologists as well. Our hope with CoinList is that creators can focus on building awesome tech and expanding the valuable uses for application tokens while reducing the amount of time and resource they need to spend making sure they stay within the parameters of the law.
Filecoin may be limited to accredited investors for this particular sale, but that's not to say other tokens that use the platform in the future would be required to do the same. Ultimately the decision is up to the creators, but they should be very well educated on the implications of what those choices could mean.
Agreed -- little doubt that the Bay Area attracts teaching talent that colleges in less desirable areas aren't able to. That said, I feel strongly in the potential for community colleges nation wide to raise their standards and become places of first choice for citizens not entirely set on an expensive 4 year university with questionable value.
Another anecdote on the power of community college:
Back in 2009 I enrolled at Community College of San Francisco. I was 19 and had no idea what I wanted to do career wise, so I took broad and rigorous curriculum focused on transferring to UC-Berkeley.
The 2 years I spent there were some of the best of my life. I was frequently pushed and challenged by excellent professors who had true passion for their subjects (a few even had Ph.D.s). I grew a passion for learning Spanish (a subject that I had found painful in high school) among many others and got involved with several extracurricular groups. By my second year I was an elected student government senator and president of the business club. I was amazed by all the school had to offer hungry students and I took advantage of every opportunity. Not to mention I met some of my closet friends in life geeking out in study groups.
When it came time to apply to 4 year universities (fall and spring of my second and final year) I decided to apply to Stanford in addition to my originally intended UC-Berkeley. Just a few months later I was shocked to accept Stanford’s offer of transfer admission to complete my undergraduate degree. Going to a place like Stanford would have been unthinkable for me just a few years earlier in high school, back then I had pretty average grades (around a 3.4) and mediocre test scores. Community college let me re-invent myself as a student and start with a completely fresh slate.
When I got into Stanford I eventually started to focus in on a major and skill-set, taking a ton of CS classes in the process. While I hadn’t studied CS in community college (although I think they do offer it), I strongly feel the high level of general curriculum I took prepared me to major in nearly anything I would have liked at Stanford. I now work as a full-time software engineer, something I had no knowledge of whatsoever when I first started community college.
No doubt my admission to Stanford is an outlier for community college students (only a tiny percentage are admitted), however a ton of very intelligent and eager students transfer to 4 year universities every year, including several of my close friends. They have now entered the workforce and are highly contributing members to society and the tax-base.
I could go on forever about the benefits of community college (and in some ways how certain things were better than at a place like Stanford), however the short of it is that indeed, I also owe it all to community college, too.
Wow, had no idea it wasn't customary to pay interns. That makes me wonder if I could get a job with someone doing a temporary contract for summer? Would that be unheard of?
Just like mifeng mentioned, it really is a facts and circumstances determination per token. Given we had to build all of the token sale scaffolding (legal, tech, etc.) for Filecoin, it made sense to open this up to other technologists as well. Our hope with CoinList is that creators can focus on building awesome tech and expanding the valuable uses for application tokens while reducing the amount of time and resource they need to spend making sure they stay within the parameters of the law. Filecoin may be limited to accredited investors for this particular sale, but that's not to say other tokens that use the platform in the future would be required to do the same. Ultimately the decision is up to the creators, but they should be very well educated on the implications of what those choices could mean.