RE: BLOODY IMPORTANT QUESTION: should we consider STEEM-ENGINE tokens a security or utility?

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I would never issue a SCOT token or an SMT of my own in my own name. The last thing the world needs is yet another shit token for laughs. There are too many out there already. If it were a serious token intended to have a use case and a real business model, issued with the intent to raise money, I wouldn't want to have to deal with all the legal headache resulting from issuing a token with the potential to be interpreted as a security. Issuing a token of that type would also raise tax and accounting issues I have zero interest in having to dealt with.



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There is value in rewarding people with tokens though. I think a key mistake people are making is that all these token creators are trying to raise funds with tokens. It sounds like a nice use case (crowdfunding) and it is a pity the governments are not leaving the people alone and just focusing on blatant fraud cases.

However, tokens are useful without raising money as well. Tokens are great for customer acquisition and promotion. Tokens could be useful in a new coupon economy, where online businesses give out tokens that allow people to try things for free.

For example, let's say you created two separate businesses. One is a t-shirt store, and the other is a shoe store. The shoe store has a token called SHOE, and you gift anyone willing to subscribe to your newsletter with 25 SHOE tokens. You agree to accept SHOE tokens for shoes at your store or US dollars. This allows you to incentivize many people to subscribe to your newsletter and listen to news from your business.

Additionally, once they get the 25 SHOE tokens they realize that all the shoes in the store cost 250 SHOE or more, which means they can't use their 25 SHOE to get shoes. So, they can either sell their SHOE tokens for some STEEM on the DEX, or buy 225 SHOE from the the business directly, or they can power up the SHOE and join the business' community area and engage with others for upvotes and curation rewards until their total amount has accumulated to 250+ SHOE.

Now lets contrast that with your t-shirt store. How are you going to motivate people to subscribe to your newsletter? How are you going to motivate people to actively engage with others in your business' community? It will all be a lot harder. Tokenomics is a powerful change to business productivity online, and it might even turn product and service consumers/users into a job... Its a weird, yet interesting future coming due to blockchain.

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I agree with all that. But it's still in a legal, regulatory and taxational gray area and as long as I can't afford a legal department of my own, I'll gladly skip it.

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