Well I guess YOU missed the release by the SEC chairman on Cypto currency. Don't worry though for I did find it for you. Here's what he said:
Merely calling a token a "utility" token or structuring it to provide some utility does not prevent the token from being a security.[15] Tokens and offerings that incorporate features and marketing efforts that emphasize the potential for profits based on the entrepreneurial or managerial efforts of others continue to contain the hallmarks of a security under U.S. law. It is especially troubling when the promoters of these offerings emphasize the secondary market trading potential of these tokens, i.e., the ability to sell them on an exchange at a profit. In short, prospective purchasers are being sold on the potential for tokens to increase in value – with the ability to lock in those increases by reselling the tokens on a secondary market – or to otherwise profit from the tokens based on the efforts of others. These are key hallmarks of a security and a securities offering.
So a TOKEN is considered MONEY
He also said this:
As I have stated previously, these market participants should treat payments and other transactions made in cryptocurrency as if cash were being handed from one party to the other.
I also took this to mean you CANNOT just take someone else's investment out of THEIR wallet:
There should be no misunderstanding about the law. When investors are offered and sold securities – which to date ICOs have largely been –they are entitled to the benefits of state and federal securities laws and sellers and other market participants must follow these laws.
If you'd like to read the whole statement released please feel free to do so:
By the end of it you will fully understand that innovations have occurred throughout history....and they've all ended up coming under the same regulations that old innovations have and that the SEC does not tend to take likely violations and have already went to bat for some losses of crypto funds.
OK, I'll bite. What do you believe the solution might be? Or what should happen?
If we do away with flags, there's no longer ANY disincentive for someone to come in here and do something "scammy" to fill their pockets, haejin style.
If we say "Steemit needs to ban scammy accounts" then the whole freedom, and non-censorship and — for that matter — the idea of decentralization goes right down the toilet... Steemit basically become "Farcebook with tokens."
But this seems to have wandered a bit from the original discussion of Steemit as a Ponzi.
Just my opinion would be that if someone filed a compliant because their wallet was zero'd out over abuse they'd be found to have abused the monetary system, the current system in place to deal with abusers would more than likely be found adequate given it's a new technology. Therefore it would seem to me their complaint would be unfounded based on abuse/fraud/scam, on the other hand zeroing out someone's account because you didn't like what they said would be considered illegal, just as illegal as if someone said something you didn't like and walked into a bank and emptied your account out over it. You have to use reasonable judgement when reaching beyond flagging a article or comment over something said into their wallet for further punishment versus doing so over abuse/fraud/scams. Every system it would seem to me has to have it's safeguards, this is unfolding new technology, there has to be a way to reign in bad actors but that same reign doesn't stretch to those wanting to use it for censorship.