The law is clear. It's not the job of regulatory agencies to advise companies on how to become compliant with the law and their rules. The law and their rules are...the law and their rules! Hire a lawyer for that!
It would be absurdly burdensome and expensive for the government to have to advise people on how to follow the law when they're not following the law. If you're not sure how to follow the law, get an expert in the law! That's why there's a regulated profession that explicitly provides expert advice on following the law.
I don't want to press too far, because I don't think you actually meant it, but...it's like you're advocating for socialized lawyers. Which is definitely an interesting idea!
> It would be absurdly burdensome and expensive for the government to have to advise people on how to follow the law when they're not following the law.
Isn't this the exact same burden it would be for that person to hire a lawyer? All it would do is require the government to internalize the cost of regulatory compliance, which would increase efficiency by aligning the incentives of the government with reducing compliance costs.
> If you're not sure how to follow the law, get an expert in the law! That's why there's a regulated profession that explicitly provides expert advice on following the law.
Except that they don't actually have the authority to tell you if you're following the law. If you hire a lawyer and they tell you that the law is ambiguous and there isn't any relevant caselaw yet, you still have no idea if you're following the law or not. Meanwhile no one with the authority to make a binding determination will give you an answer.
Without case law, authorities don't know neither. With the two law suites, Coinbase and Binance, we are goong to find out.
Generally so, if a company works in, or close, to a highly regulated industry it is up to that company to do so in a compliant way. Or generally compliant, there isba tendency of start-ups in Germany complaining about how taxes apply to them as well. If said company is not comoliant, it is on them. And does happen all over the place, to all companies, all the time. For stuff ranging from export, to taxes, to anti-trust and corruption. Only that, say, Lockheed isn't getting any slack when it comes to creative sales techniques.
And compliance costs are costs of doing business. If you cheap out on that, well, ypu deserve what ever is coming your way.
> Without case law, authorities don't know neither.
Authorities are the ones who create the rules. If they tell you what the rule means, that's what the rule means, because it's their rule. That's the point of having them be the one to tell you.
You can write rules without knowing how they'll be broken.
Some people defend themselves by saying they didn't take the action they're accused of, others can cop to the action they took, and argue that the law doesn't apply because x, y, z.
So, like, that's why case law is a whole thing, it extends "the rules" to "here's how the rules have been interpreted in these situations"
>If you hire a lawyer and they tell you that the law is ambiguous and there isn't any relevant caselaw yet, you still have no idea if you're following the law or not.
Then you have a couple of choices with various outcomes. One of which is exactly what is happening to Coinbase right now. You can either 100% unambiguously follow the law, or you can push your luck and adhere to what you think either is or should be the law. In the latter case you may become said case law, whether you are able to continue your current ambiguously legal business practices or not!
But that's ridiculously inefficient compared to just going to the regulatory agency before you do the ambiguous thing and having them clarify it. Except that they won't do it.
Coinbase makes their money by working in a grey area. Why should the public subsidize (or reward) Coinbase for their shady business strategy? Why can't it be part of Coinbase's business strategy to remain on the correct side of the law and then lobby congress for changes to those laws?
That's how it's been done for the past two centuries. Why change now?
> Coinbase makes their money by working in a grey area. Why should the public subsidize large businesses in this way?
Because the public through its government is what created the grey area, so it should cover the cost of its lack of clarity, as a disincentive for causing it.
> Why can't it be part of Coinbase's business strategy to remain on the correct side of the law and then lobby congress for changes to those laws?
The entire point is that nobody will say whether they're allowed to do this, so they can't even know if they're on the correct side of the law. How dumb is it that the only way to find out if you can legally do something is to do it without knowing whether you're allowed to?
> That's how it's been done for the past two centuries. Why change now?
The best time to change a bad rule is two centuries ago. The second best time is immediately.
> The entire point is that nobody will say whether they're allowed to do this, so they can't even know if they're on the correct side of the law. How dumb is it that the only way to find out if you can legally do something is to do it without knowing whether you're allowed to?
Isn't that the point of hiring an attorney, or if you're Coinbase, a large team of lawyers? We don't know what Coinbase's lawyers said to them (attorney client privilege). But this could just be a legal ruse, right? Raise doubt? Even though Coinbase knew they were in a shady area and raised it in their S1 filing?
Or do you think Coinbase was really this stupid and naive?
Lawyers can tell you whether an ambiguity exists, not how it will be resolved. To find that out you have to do it and then see if you get punished, which is absurd.
The latter isn't a thing so. Especially if, as Coinbase and Binance did, ignore willingly the most basic rules around ypur business because of tech, innovation, disruption and the internet.
