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      "body": "Congratulations @aaronday! You received a personal award!\n\n<table><tr><td>https://steemitimages.com/70x70/http://steemitboard.com/@aaronday/birthday2.png</td><td>Happy Birthday! - You are on the Steem blockchain for 2 years!</td></tr></table>\n\n<sub>_You can view [your badges on your Steem Board](https://steemitboard.com/@aaronday) and compare to others on the [Steem Ranking](https://steemitboard.com/ranking/index.php?name=aaronday)_</sub>\n\n\n###### [Vote for @Steemitboard as a witness](https://v2.steemconnect.com/sign/account-witness-vote?witness=steemitboard&approve=1) to get one more award and increased upvotes!",
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      "permlink": "fiscal-conservatism-in-new-hampshire-built-on-entitlement-abuse-and-healthcare-deception",
      "title": "Fiscal Conservatism in New Hampshire: Built on Entitlement Abuse and Healthcare Deception",
      "body": "Recently, the New Hampshire Senate began a public debate about reauthorizing Obamacare Medicaid expansion. Since 1991, New Hampshire has been funding a large portion of its general fund from a Medicaid scam loophole. We have since expanded the program and are now proposing to deceptively use the opioid crisis to expand and make more permanent our 27-year orgy of fiscal irresponsibility.\n\nThis has all been done to further the national political career prospects of the elite and extend a political dynasty. The evidence is overwhelming, the long term destruction is devastating, and the time to address the issue is now.\n\nI have provided an initial overview in this article and will be sharing substantial additional material over the weeks to come. Medicaid expansion must be stopped. New Hampshire’s reliance on federal Medicaid money for our general fund needs to be halted, and the politicians who have deceived us for decades need to be outed and stripped of their “fiscal conservative” title.\n\n**A Fake Fiscal Conservative is Born**\n\nNew Hampshire, the “Live Free or Die” state, prides itself on having no sales or income tax. For decades, New Hampshire Republican leaders on the national stage have positioned themselves as being the fiscally conservative, adults in the room. It turns out to be an act. Since 1991, New Hampshire has been using substantial amounts of money from a federal Medicaid matching program to avoid making hard fiscal decisions all while being able to still avoid having a sales or income tax.\n\nNew Hampshire was doing quite well until the tech boom came to an end in 1989. By 1991, the state was facing a $35 million budget deficit. Rather than cut spending, address unfunded pensions, or take any steps to structurally fix the problem, they found a loophole.\n\nAs discussed in <a href=\"https://books.google.com/books?id=JI0MEZXf0-sC&pg=PA183&lpg=PA183&dq=governor+%E2%80%9Cjohn+sununu%E2%80%9D+medicaid+1988&source=bl&ots=KLEypr-r4-&sig=OFxh3lNVH-5ZGflToXG4JpSX2DA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwifypuXjLDZAhUkja0KHcEkDv0Q6AEwCnoECA8QAQ#v=onepage&q=governor%20%E2%80%9Cjohn%20sununu%E2%80%9D%20medicaid%201988&f=false\">Medicaid and the Costs of Federalism, 1984–1992:</a>\n\n>“A Democratic HECC aide suggests that in 1991 President Bush and his Chief of Staff, former New Hampshire Governor John Sununu, intervened on New Hampshire’s behalf to gain HCFA approval for the most extensive special financing program among all the states.”\n\nHere’s how it works:\n![mediscam.png](https://steemitimages.com/DQmSeZNcgc9cxoPsoA5NWAFt8vFebk86Zu4g7M7EypzXw1X/mediscam.png)\n\nDuring 1991 and 1992, this scam was used to collect an additional $407 million from Medicaid on top of the normal amount collected.\n\nEven lawmakers that were behind the plan at the time of passage, now realize the long term implications, According to a Washington Post article from 1993:\n\n>“It was a scam, no question about it,” said Douglas E. Hall, a Republican state legislator who helped devise the scheme in 1991 but now feels it enabled New Hampshire to postpone dealing with its underlying fiscal problems. \n“We’re funding our state judicial system, our highway program and everything else out of a Medicaid loophole, which is being funded out of the {federal} deficit.”\n\n>“We used it to balance our budget,” says state Rep. Donna P. Sytek, former chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee. “Probably it wasn’t in the spirit of the law. But it was in the letter.”\nOther states quickly followed New Hampshire. As you can see from this HHS graph, the overall cost of Medicaid nationally has surged since 1990, with Mediscam being a major driver.\n\nOther states quickly followed New Hampshire. As you can see from this HHS graph, the overall cost of Medicaid nationally has surged since 1990, with Mediscam being a major driver.\n\n![Medicaid Spending.png](https://steemitimages.com/DQmRfSQPR5hmH1rsqJRCRKmpAenjgtcD1eXNBymuj1TBPMM/Medicaid%20Spending.png)\n\nWhat is even more unbelievable is that Judd Gregg leveraged this scam to get elected 3-times to the United State Senate while branding himself as a self-described “skinflint” who was “going to stand up and be counted on the basis of fiscal conservatism.”\n\nWe have allowed the “fiscal conservative” label to be used by Gregg and many of the others that have followed (Merrill, Benson, John E. Sununu, and Chris Sununu). In reality, they abandoned fiscal responsibility and handed the bill to our children and future generations through massive federal debt and unfunded entitlement liabilities.\n\nFor Gregg, the skullduggery didn’t stop with the Medicaid scam. Here are some of his other epic failures:\n\n*Was a key player in pushing through the <a href=\"https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=130308567\">$700 billion TARP bailout program </a> for the bankers.\n\n*Almost <a href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/13/us/politics/13gregg.html\">accepted a job as Commerce Secretary </a> under President Obama.\n\n*Became an advisor to <a href=\"http://thehill.com/policy/finance/163777-gregg-joins-goldman-sachs\">Goldman Sachs </a> after pushing through major bank bailout.\n\nEven more outrageous, Gregg has relatively recently written articles on various financial topics and positions himself as “the adult in the room” when people suggest ideas like auditing the fed.\n\nFrom Mediscam to TARP, the biggest fear Gregg should have is an audit of his own reckless behavior and the carnage he has left behind for future generations.\n\nThe gang’s all here\n\nNow let’s fast forward to 2013. New Hampshire was faced with the decision as to whether or not to expand Medicaid under Obamacare. It turns out that John H. Sununu and some of the original team that was involved in the special financing scheme colluded on New Hampshire’s Obamacare Medicaid expansion program.\n\nDuring Senate President Chuck Morse’s 2013 Libertas Awards speech he mentions the fact that Tom Scully (former advisor to George H. W. Bush) was a consultant on this project. Scully worked with John H. Sununu (presumably on securing the special financing arrangement now known as Mediscam) and was the architect of the multi-trillion dollar Medicare Part D boondoggle (that Jeb Bradley co-sponsored when he was a US Congressman). It was Scully, according to Morse, who suggested using federal Medicaid dollars to fund private insurance and then have the insurers pay a tax to offset the reduction in reimbursements from the federal government.\n\nMany others offered advice to Morse and Bradley. Yet, they chose their trusted crony. Upon further examination of his background, if you want a new Medicaid shell game, he’s the perfect guy with whom to consult.\n\n*According to an <a href=\"https://oig.hhs.gov/publications/docs/press/2004/070704IGStatement.pdf\">internal investigation </a> by the Department of Health and Human Services, Scully took part in efforts to intentionally withhold cost estimates of the Medicare prescription drug benefit from Congress while it was being considered for passage. A <a href=\"http://www.gao.gov/decisions/appro/302911.pdf\">report by the Government Accountability Office </a> on the investigation said that Scully threatened to fire Medicare’s chief actuary, Richard Foster, if he provided the data to Congress and recommended that HHS seek to recover Scully’s salary due to this infraction.\n\n*A subsequent report by the <a href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/07/us/inquiry-confirms-top-medicare-official-threatened-actuary-over-cost-drug.html\">Congressional Research Service </a> concluded that Scully and the Bush administration broke federal law by telling Foster to withhold information from Congress because Congress’ “right to receive truthful information from federal agencies to assist in its legislative functions is clear and unassailable.”\n\nUltimately, the Republican-led Senate passed Obamacare Medicaid expansion in the State of New Hampshire (despite substantial opposition by the overwhelming majority of Republicans throughout the state). At the time, Jeb Bradley stated that he was sure he could obtain waivers from Health and Human Services (HHS) to protect the taxpayers from any additional cost from this program. Initially, the federal government would reimburse 100% of the costs of the expansion. That percentage would be reduced over time to 90%. The new scheme that the Bradley, Scully, Sununu team came up with works as follows:\n\n*In most states Medicaid reimbursements are made directly by the state. Under Bradley’s model, instead of Medicaid managing the disbursements, the expanded Medicaid money will go to private insurers who will administer the program.\n\n*Hospitals and Insurers will pay a tax to make up the difference not being paid by the federal government.\n\nWhile it is true that the federal government technically isn’t picking up the tab, this is another ruse. It is obvious that the hospitals and insurers are simply going to pass on the added costs to the consumers.\n\nBradley’s deception was detected. The Trump administration ruled that their provider-funded model is against the law. We are now at risk of losing all of our <a href=\"http://www.unionleader.com/Trumps-HHS-to-NH:-Fix-Medicaid-expansion-flaw-by-end-of-2018-or-face-shutdown\">expanded Medicaid money:</a>\n\n>“CMS Medicaid Director Brian Neale informed N.H. Health and Human Services Commissioner Jeffrey Meyers in a July 25 letter that provider donations are not allowed under federal law “except in very limited circumstances” and not the way New Hampshire uses them.\n\n>Medicaid expansion goes out of existence in the state at the end of 2018 unless lawmakers reauthorize it.”\n\nJeb Bradley was first elected to the New Hampshire state house in 1990. His political career has been bookended by these entitlement scams. Jeb can’t quit, the entire house of cards would collapse. Like many other politicians, he picked the crisis de jure for his next trick.\n\nNew Hampshire has one of the worst opioid problems in the country. Despite evidence that shows that the death rate from opioid overdoses has increased more in states that have expanded Medicaid and that there is no evidence linking more expanded Medicaid to opioid treatment success, Jeb didn’t want to waste the virtue signaling PR potential of using the opioid crisis to protect our general fund.\n\n![opioiddeath.png](https://steemitimages.com/DQmWiFrritoeCj3KgbZU4PWGs3ZnmzDnmFQns2smPZ1QpLm/opioiddeath.png)\n\n\nRemember, this isn’t about the opioid crisis, and it’s not even about Medicaid. It is about funding part of New Hampshire’s budget using federal Medicaid money. If this program goes away, New Hampshire will be faced with the consequences of 27 years of poor financial management built on an unsound financing scheme.\n\nIt gets even worse. Remember, we can’t use taxes on insurers or hospitals to cover the gap not reimbursed by the federal government. Bradley’s solution is to use money from the state monopoly-run liquor stores to <a href=http://www.unionleader.com/Senate-GOP-unveils-Medicaid-expansion-plan> fund that gap.</a>\n\n“The plan would claim 5 percent of state liquor-sale profits to serve as a taxpayer match for the New Hampshire Granite Care Advantage Health Care Program.”\n\nReality Check:\n\n1. Led by Republicans, for 27 years, New Hampshire has been funding part of its General Fund (not for healthcare) using Federal Medicaid matching funds.\n\n2. These federal funds have added billions of dollars to the debt and unfunded entitlement liabilities. These massive costs will be paid for by our children and future generations.\n\n3. Republicans wanted to further the scam by participating in Obamacare Medicaid expansion. They deceived the taxpayers by coming up with a scheme that was later determined to be illegal under federal law. It uses taxes on hospitals and insurers to make up for the fact that the federal government was dropping its 100% reimbursement rate to 90% over time.\n\n4. New Hampshire has one of the worst opioid problems in the country. Despite the fact that the evidence shows that states with expanded Medicaid have shown greater increases in opioid death rates after expanding Medicaid, Jeb Bradley has deceptively used the crisis as a justification to push for the expansion. He is proposing using a sales tax from New Hampshire’s state liquor store monopoly to replace the illegal tax on healthcare providers.\n\nIn short, we are using money from one addiction (alcohol) to fund unproven treatment for another addiction (opioids) all to expand a federal entitlement (Medicaid) so that we can use the money from that match to pay for our non-healthcare related New Hampshire state budget and cover-up 27 years of fiscal irresponsibility.\n\nOur real addiction seems to be to fiscal irresponsibility.\n\n![mediscammeme.png](https://steemitimages.com/DQmRVAeztwxDfdBGs1pXvXFHRGzi8Q9P4mv6iDbQpn6udVt/mediscammeme.png)",
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      "title": "Facebook's Zuckerberg signals HODL to Fiat",
      "body": "By now you have probably read that Facebook has made a number of changes to their advertising policy. In addition to moving away from publishers and news sites with an emphasis on engaging user generated content, they also decided to ban cryptocurrency ads. \n\nWhat is the possible motivation for this? I am suspicious that Zuckerberg wants to protect the little guy from investment scams. In my opinion, he is late to the game on blockchain and decentralization in general. In fact, he seems more focussed on social engineering and establishing himself as an authority. My bet is that Facebook goes the way of Myspace over the next 3 years. \n\nI am the Chairman of Stark360 (http://www.stark360.org) and we focus on defending blockchain freedom for everyone (not just the cronies like the VC ecosystem and authoritarians like Zuckerberg). Please see an overview at https://steemit.com/cryptocurrency/@aaronday/why-venture-capitalists-are-the-biggest-threat-to-blockchain \n\nFacebook recently blocked one of Stark360’s ads. They decided that this ad doesn’t meet their new requirements. \n\n![britishpound.jpg](https://steemitimages.com/DQmQ7gq9AcMZgbefZqDo4tQofwTDCT4VP1puYrnqceqr13f/britishpound.jpg)\n\n\nNow, I am not sure what percentage of ICOs are scams, but I am pretty sure 100% of all existing fiat currencies are scams. Do you think he has banned ads from other pump-and-dump fiat corporate welfare recipients like JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America, and Goldman Sachs?\n\nI think maybe I will try to run these two ads and see what happens. \n\n![dollardeclinehodl.jpg](https://steemitimages.com/DQmXFurd3RR6HXPxTowDZMCQKZeCGd5u763F8QWYZ7pnwxf/dollardeclinehodl.jpg)\n\n![globaldebtHODL.jpg](https://steemitimages.com/DQmTw24826KSQbg3sXP6ao5z8Px56AuUESkTPmHYewWwupK/globaldebtHODL.jpg)",
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      "title": "Why Venture Capitalists are the Biggest Threat to Blockchain",
      "body": "Why are most Venture Capitalists politically liberal? Why are most tech startups based in heavily taxed and regulated California, New York, and Massachusetts? If VCs invest in innovation, why has there been such little innovation within the venture industry itself? \n\nThese are questions I have been trying to figure out over the past 22 years as a serial entrepreneur and then, most recently, as a liberty activist/politician. At age 19, I started my first company during the .com era, met with hundreds of VCs, and received term sheets for over $100MM in venture funding. For a variety of reasons, I never went the venture route, although I spent a brief amount of time as a venture capitalist after the .com bust.\n\nI adopted a libertarian view of capitalism at an early age and have been involved with the liberty community for the past 8 years through The Free State Project. I have always viewed individualism and voluntary exchange as being at the heart of capitalism. This understanding is at odds with the three questions I posed above.  \n\nThe Blockchain Revolution has the potential to decentralize power, money, and information in a way that benefits everyone on the planet by empowering every individual through voluntary trade. Trying to answer the three questions posed above against the backdrop of the blockchain revolution reveals that the traditional VC ecosystem is a clear and present danger to the widespread adoption of blockchain technology. I have outlined my reasoning below along with a plan to combat these parasites. \n\nVenture Capitalist Defined\nI think the following is an accurate definition of a venture capitalist. \n\nVenture capitalist\n\n a middleman who invests other people’s money (much of it taxpayer theft) into startups. \n\nTraditional venture capitalists typically exhibit the following traits. \nThey invest little to none of their own money\nMost VCs fail to outperform the market \nVCs make a nice living off of fees regardless of whether or not they make money \n\nSynonym: middleman, parasite, crony\n\nWhat do you mean by taxpayer theft? \n\nThere is nothing wrong with investing and managing other people’s money; however, the largest investors (limited partners) into the venture funds who back innovation are ~50% funded by taxpayer theft and unions. \n\nPublic pension funds provide retirement benefits for public employees and are funded through force by taxation.  Universities enjoy non-profit status, receive billions in taxpayer theft-funded research grants annually, and receive payment via student loans that can’t be discharged via a typical bankruptcy procedure. \n\n![USVentureFunding.png](https://steemitimages.com/DQmW1cdrd8RmwzYX7FqwdZmjgybF9aSsdT3MmdSz3J9FLkA/USVentureFunding.png)\n\nSource: Dow Jones' Private Equity Analyst.\n\nAnd, if you think this is pathetic, take a look at Europe: \n\n![EuropeanVenture.png](https://steemitimages.com/DQmPKKgWxVwVJJWy3xmZfTruzP7Bbd2j5obQvsURWiiZebY/EuropeanVenture.png)\n\n\nSo if you add up public pension funds, endowments, sovereign wealth funds, union pensions funds, and some percentage of fund of funds (since the other categories I just mentioned also invest in fund of funds) you get to over 50% of venture funding coming from organizations that are funded by taxpayer-theft. Many of these public pension funds and university endowments have social goals for investing (outside of just trying to maximize financial returns). This influences who gets funding, where the funding happens, and when the funding occurs. \n\n\nThe single largest public pension fund investor is California Public Employees' Retirement System (CalPERS).  As of June 2016, CalPERS announced that they held $26.4 billion in Private Equity investments. They have previously stated that they have a target of 5% of their Private Equity holdings reserved for venture capital. This means that CalPERS holds ~ $1.3 billion in venture capital investments. The total venture capital investments for 2016 was $61.4 billion.\n\nCalPERS includes all CA state employees including teachers and their bloated university system. All of CalPERS money comes from taxpayer theft. \n\nLet’s dig one level deeper and see who the biggest beneficiaries are of the CalPERS pension system.  \n\n![calPERS pensions.png](https://steemitimages.com/DQmYdMemTL9JGiwtgZ99kExxxKpDkdi5z16A2ULVhg9WqdE/calPERS%20pensions.png)\n\n\n\nI bet you never thought that one of the biggest beneficiaries of venture capital investing was the former administrator of the County of Solana, Michael Johnson, who rakes in $390,485 per year or that a retired sanitation worker from LA makes $345,408 per year! \n\n\n\nOne of the only things more collectivist than public employees (more specifically the employees of a mandatory, compulsory public education system) are any types of funding strings that might come at the direction of those who invest pension funds on their behalf. \n\nHow the taxpayer-funded investors in venture capital politicize venture investing and promote malinvestment \n\nYou don’t think the type of people that would manage a public teachers pension fund would make investment decisions based on ideology over financial performance, would you? CalPERS history of “social investing”. This is a matter of fact and a case study in the potential damaging effects of public pension investing. \n\n>“CalPERS has also steered billions of dollars into politically connected firms. And it has ventured into “socially responsible” investment strategies, making bad bets that have lost hundreds of millions of dollars. Such dubious practices have piled up a crushing amount of pension debt, which California residents—and their children—will somehow have to repay.” -Steven Malanga, City-Journal, Winter 2013\n\nAt the peak of the mortgage crisis, CalPERS lost $160 billion of value in their portfolio. Of course, they have a habit of not taking responsibility for their actions and have sued everyone from ratings agencies to investment banks. Fortunately for taxpayers, CalPERS ultimately lost a Supreme Court case (5-4) regarding their suing of some of the major investment banks. \n\n![calPERScartoon.png](https://steemitimages.com/DQmTNHerowMRqyGRYEhzaHgzr7wBuDh6ZNQi5ETUAJozbAe/calPERScartoon.png)\n\n**Bullying venture funds into not making capital calls to cover-up their other poor investments**\n\nWhen a venture capital fund says they have raised $x million, they don’t actually have that money sitting in the bank. \nHere’s how it works: \n*Limited Partners (like CalPERs): commit to investing a certain amount of money into a venture fund \n*When the venture fund needs to make an investment (or group of investments), they make a capital call. \n*The limited partner is contractually committed to invest the money as per the terms of the agreement. If they default there are mechanisms for buying out the limited partnership interest at a discount, etc. \n\nHere’s an example of what happened during the mortgage crisis in 2008 and how it negatively impacted startups: \n\n*CalPERS places outsized bets on mortgage backed securities and on direct investments in real estate in California and New York that ultimately went bankrupt. \n*Their reckless positions put them in a position where they have to liquidate their more stable holdings (like Apple stock) in order to maintain minimum liquidity levels. \n*Leveraging their size and influence as large limited partners, they “subtly” tell the venture funds that if they make a capital call, they will honor it but may be disinclined to invest in the venture firms' next fund\n*Many venture funds choose not to make the capital calls choosing their LPs interests over the companies they invest in. \n*The companies didn’t receive the funding they expected and either have to scale down or go out of business. \n\nSound far fetched? This actually happened during the crisis. And this is exactly the kind of thing that venture capitalists don’t tell you. \n\n**Myth versus Reality**\n\nThere have been numerous books, articles, podcasts, etc. about the mysterious of venture capital. Like every other type of middleman, the thrive in obscurity and have gone out of their way to make what they do look like magic. I want to demystify some of this for you. \n\nThe process by which traditional venture funds are structured, how they raise money, and who the raise money from tells you everything you need to know. \n\nA typical venture fund last for 10 years and the agreements that the venture funds have with their investors determine the parameters for the size, state, amount, geography and industry of investments.  \n\nThese initial agreements spell out which industries they can invest in, how much they allocate for initial investment (say Series A) versus follow-on investments, where they invest (California for example) and how much is allocated for salaries and overhead. Typically 2% of a fund is allocated for salaries and overhead per year! \n\nAs an example, a fund may only be able to invest $3-$5MM in Series A technology investments and may not exceed $15 million over the lifecycle of that investment and must invest 75% of their investments within a 25 mi radius of CA. \n\nThey will try to convince you that it is there superior intelligence and experience that leads them to whether to invest or not and at what valuation. You will hear things like “venture capital investing is more of an art than a science”. \n\nThe reality is that these are more likely factors that determine whether a VC invests than the merits of the opportunity:  \n*How much of their fund do they have left? \n*How has the rest of their fund performed? \n*Do they risk being embarrassed and losing LPs because your business model is too innovative and might offend a “social investing strategy”? \n*Is your contact at the venture capital firm junior within the firm (do they have any clout)? \n*Is there some internal political battle/pissing contest between the partner sponsoring your deal versus the senior team?\n\nKnowing the structure of venture funds and the source of funds allows me to finally answer my three nagging VC questions:\n\n\n*Why are VCs based largely in CA and MA?*\n\nTheir largest taxpayer-theft funded LPs (like CalPERS and Harvard University endowment) are located in those areas and it is a contractual term in the investment deal. \n\n*Why are VCs liberal?*\nOver 50% of their funding comes from taxpayer-theft related sources. In short, their funders are liberal and have a liberal social investing strategy using other people’s money)\n\n*Why don’t VCs innovate?* \nThe standard 10-year deal fund structure is dictated by their large, bureaucratic, tax-payer theft funded investors. \n\n\nMy view of capitalism wasn’t wrong. Venture capitalists are actually Venture Socialists. \n\n\nAs an entrepreneur, there is no reason to subject yourself to this crony fraud. \n\n\nThis is why ICOs are such a threat to VCs, and also why the VC ecosystem, desperate to protect their crony enterprise, are the biggest threat to ICOs and, by extension, the broad based adoption of blockchain technology. \n\n**The crony VC threat to ICOs**\n\nIf you have a startup and can raise money through an ICO, you don’t need a VC. Further, if your ICO is for a legitimate utility token that provides value within your ecosystem, what is the possible usefulness of having a VC buy a bunch of your token at the ICO. The short answer, there is none. \n\n>“The most massive market manipulation and pump-and-dump schemes related to ICOs comes from VCs themselves. They are the principals artificially manipulating the price of these tokens, denying the ecosystem of valuable tokens, and keeping the opportunity to make money out of the hands of the individual and the entrepreneur”. \n\nTechnically putting together an ICO isn’t all that difficult or expensive. However, VCs and their crony lawyers, accountants, and banker pals have tried to instill FUD into the marketplace. If you talk to a lawyer today they will tell you that an ICO will cost at least $200K, and will propose the following kind of breakdown: \n\n*Legal fees: $50K (this includes making sure that you comply with securities laws, put all of the BS disclaimer language into the white paper and marketing document), and draft appropriate advisory agreements. \n\n*Accounting fees: $50-$75K: If you want to sell to foreign investors you will need to talk to a big accounting firm and form an offshore entity in a place like Switzerland or the Cayman Islands. \n\n*Smart contract development: $50K to develop a smart contract \n\n*Smart contract audit: $10-20K (kind of an equivalent to having audited financials if you were doing a traditional IPO)\nMarketing/PR: $50-100K to use a “top tier” firm\n\nThey will tell you that SEC action is expected any day now and that you should protect yourself from any pending action. They will also tell you that in order to pay for the $200K+ in fees in order to get the ICO launched, you should take equity capital from VCs. As an added benefit, it is discussed that the VCs will invest in your ICO. How is this whole structure not a pump and dump scheme?\n\nAlso, consider this: It takes the average startup 7 years to get to liquidity. This is going to generate hundreds of thousands in legal fees for lawyers during that time period. If liquidity is nearly instant, and if people replace lawyers with smart contracts, how do these law firms stay in business? The motive behind SEC scare tactics is becoming clearer now, isn’t it? \n\n**Sowing the seeds of SEC-sanctioned destruction**\n\nThe whole approach taken by the VCs, their cronies, and the SEC mirrors the .com bubble. I started in ecommerce company in 1995. At one point, we went around the country meeting with investment banks and gearing up to do an IPO (this was in the 1999 to 2000 time frame). I remember meeting with a “top equity analyst” at one of the most noted investment banks during the .com era. If I recall correctly, he had put out a buy rating on a public e-commerce company that had a $100MM burn rate and negative gross margins. I asked him, “what was there path to profitability, to make it up in volume?” Of course, that once high-flyer ultimately went bankrupt. At the time, however, the investment bankers that were in the room told me my burn rate wasn’t high enough and that the most important factor for them in doing an IPO was who the venture investors were and whether or not we had locked up a multi-million dollar contract with a company like Yahoo! or Excite. \n\nThis is an outline  of the generic VC/crony pump-and-dump Y2K internet scheme: \n\n1) **Hype up internet portals (Yahoo!, Excite, Lycos, Geocities) and take them public.** The first major round of companies to go public were portals/search engines. These companies weren’t profitable but the analysts and bankers pitched them on the amount of traffic they had and the potential for ad revenue. They would forecast advertising revenue based on what would appear to be ridiculous CPMs (cost per thousand impressions). \n2) **Promote the future of success of ecommerce companies as being based on exclusive, uneconomical advertising deals with portals:**  In order for your e-commerce business to succeed, analysts and bankers would claim that you needed to  lock up advertising with one or more of the major portals. These partnerships would often involve you paying $50MM+ in order to acquire a customers that would require a completely unrealistic number of repeat purchases to make the ROI work. That didn’t matter, they said. It was a land grab, they said. You had to be first. They made money on the portals they just took public by inflating their revenue with these horrible contracts, and then positioned themselves to do the investment banking on the next crop of ecommerce IPOs. This is the stuff of Pets.com legend. \n3) **VCs and their cronies win/the public and entrepreneurs lose.** In some cases the SEC came in and slapped the bankers and analysts on the wrist after the fact. For the most part, the bankers and analyst did fine while the public and the entrepreneurs suffered. \n\nMy point in all of this is not to say that the SEC should do more. It is to say that the SEC has been and will always be complicit in providing a safe harbor for this type of activity. Put simply, they are unnecessary. The individual should be able to make their own decisions, not the SEC-Wall Street crony complex.  \n\nAll of these regulators and cronies are at risk if ICOs are allowed to continue as it is very quickly being exposed that they add no value and inhibit innovation. \n\nConsider this, you already see the venture community rallying around ICO-platforms like Coinlist. They are already pitching the benefits of being compliant and make statements like: \n\n>“Get access to vetted blockchain investments. CoinList uses best practices honed from years of startup investing experience on AngelList to screen and select blockchain companies.” \n\nYou don’t think that “vetting” might mean that their VC buddies get in early and have the opportunity to participate at a deep discount, do you? This hypocrisy needs to be exposed, and individual rights and voluntary trade should be defended with maximum effort. \n\n**Protect blockchain freedom for all/expose and destroy the cronies**\n\nIt is for this reason that we are taking a firm stance at Stark360 (http://www.stark360.org) to fight against these cronies and promote the real power of blockchain technology: empowering the individual through voluntary trade. The parasites in the venture capital community are trying to use scare tactics to convince you that you have to take their money, use their lawyers, and use their platforms. They are trying to defraud the public into thinking that their participation in the deal makes it sound for others. \n\nI have been involved in the crypto community for 7 years. Guess what, the VCs weren’t involved in the creation of Bitcoin or Ethereum. They are parasites trying to use their connections and influence to come in after the fact and cement their positions through obfuscation using lawyers and accountants. \n\nDefending blockchain freedom will require action, some of it proactive and some of it reactive. Here are some initial action steps: \n\n**Expose the structure and nature of the venture capital ecosystem:** Create and share memes about VCs and their cronies in Stark360’s FB group. In my experience, these cowards don’t like to have public attention drawn to their nefarious activities. Informing other entrepreneurs first and then the public about how the venture capital ecosystem works is a very low effort activity that can reap some positive results. \n\n![parasitememe.jpeg](https://steemitimages.com/DQmbPwCFJrdXUN5sm2E68wQTNX97dVo82bj1eVTmbLQTzDG/parasitememe.jpeg)\n\n**Expose cronyism and collusion in real-time:** If you are an entrepreneur meeting with VCs and their ilk, to the extent it is legal, record what they say regarding their role and value in the ICO process. The public hates hypocrisy, and any future action by the SEC can be rendered moot if we aggregate enough rage by demonstrating that it is the parasite class in conjunction with the SEC creates the bubbles.  This fight is for the individual and decentralization and against cronyism and collectivism. We have the moral high ground. \n\n**Fight the SEC publicly and in court:** There is no reason to think that the SEC is necessarily going to clamp down on ICOs. In fact, most of the really questionable behavior is coming from the companies that are VC-backed. Keep in mind how absurd the scare tactics are coming from the lawyers. Ask yourself this question, to the extent you have a token that is used within your ecosystem, what possible value is there in having “accredited investors” hold a bunch of these tokens? If there is any pump-and-dump or market manipulation going on, it is happening here. Also, consider their track record. Is there any evidence whatsoever to suggest that the SEC did anything to prevent either the .com bust or the mortgage crisis? Does the organization learn from its mistakes or is it a revolving door of cronyism that sows the seeds of the next wave of destruction? The first head of the SEC, Joseph Kennedy, was a bootlegger. Since then, they have all been bootlickers.  That tells you just about all you need to know. Stark360 will deploy a decentralized network of activists, investigative journalists, and lawyers to publicly expose SEC corruption as well as challenge their actions in the court on behalf of blockchain companies. \n\n**Change the law:** Even if there are bad rulings and any subsequent appeals are unsuccessful, always remember that Congress makes the laws that the SEC follows. Stark360 is working on proposed legislation to clearly deregulate the SEC with respect to blockchain matters. \n\n**Final thought**\n\nNote: Everything I mentioned above applies to traditional VCs. To the extent that there are new and innovative models emerging (which I hope there are), keep an open mind to those and please contact me with information about them. However, here is a quick guide that I would use in considering whether to take money from a venture investor: \n\n**Are any of their investors funded through taxpayer theft?** If yes, kick them to the curb. You don’t need the social investing strategy of a bunch of parasites. You also don’t need to have information about your company broadcast everywhere (btw, this is one of the real reasons VCs don’t sign NDAs). VCs leak information like a sieve by virtue of the reporting requirements they have to their investors. \n\n**Do they add any value besides cash?** If no, they’re out. Money is plentiful and there is an order of magnitude more money available in crypto than in all of the venture funds combined. \n\n**Do they believe in individualism, free markets, and voluntary exchange?** If no, they are a bunch of commies trying to profit off of your effort all while trying to destroy your freedom. \n\nThe potential of decentralization, individual empowerment, and voluntary trade dwarfs the impact of the internet by 100X. This is the good fight, and the traditional VCs and their cronies are the enemy.",
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