read the SEC's new crypto assets FAQ the securities laws are starting to look opt-in now, at least as applied by the SEC to crypto if you raise money by selling a non-rights-bearing token, are careful about what you represent or promise, and have a functional crypto system, there is now an extremely broad path outside the securities laws--arguably 'functionality' is not even necessary but there's some equivocation on this the buyback guidance goes further than I expected. once the system is functional, even announcing a token buyback *program* (which I guess even could be a 'perpetual program') does not, in the staff's view, constitute a promise of essential managerial efforts. same for promises to improve the system or grow its network effects so you can retain enormous influence over the thing, keep developing it, support its price with buybacks (including under a permanent "program"), and get many of the benefits of having a public investment instrument, without giving holders the rights or protections that normally come with one they have opened a loophole in a regulatory regime whose whole point was supposed to be that you couldn't draft your way around economic reality (see e.g. can't really say if this is good or bad, but VCs etc. got a lot of what they wanted & the market should absorb all the implications of this among others, I am growing skeptical how much of a 'long tail' there will be for tokenized equity. . .if you can get people to buy a coin in the style of BNB, HYPE, PUMP, etc., with minimal regulation, why voluntarily take on the burdens of selling them equity? if you are not mag-7 level, it doesn't seem there would be much reason to focus on equity securities for your capital-raising. . . if you want to access 'traditional buyers' you can wrap the token in an equity instrument like an ADR for those institutions. . . the obvious next question is how far this extends beyond crypto businesses. can an ordinary company attach a functional token to its business and apply 100% of its profits to discretionary buybacks, without giving holders any right to those profits or making representations about future business efforts that independently trigger Howey? the FAQ doesn't expressly resolve that, but it opens a pretty enormous door equity still gives investors something a discretionary buyback token doesn't. . .the question is whether the market will pay enough for those rights to make granting them worthwhile. otherwise the incentive is to keep the equity for insiders and sell everyone else the coin crypto's current focus on hyping tokenized equity may be misguided, the bigger trend is "get all the benefits of equity with none of the burdens" of course this is SEC guidance, not a repeal of the statutes or a command to the courts. a private plaintiff or a future SEC could have other ideas but did not think I'd see it in my lifetime. . .the securities laws are being "disrupted" in substantial part by incentivizing making fewer commitments to investors. and if Warren Dems eventually take control and try to undo all this, after an entire market has organized around it, the resulting chaos will be something to behold