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Cryptocurrency Articles and Resources

The Wyoming DAO LLC

Is a Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) Right For You?

A DAO is an organization operated by a smart contract, which is a computer code running within the blockchain. The ‘A’ for Autonomous refers to the self-executing nature of it all. If a condition is met the computer code executes the transaction. There is no need for human managers, with all their failings, to be involved. The contract provides management certainty.

The DAO concept is advocated as a benefit for those from around the world with common goals who may not know or trust each other. You come together for a common project and the smart contract guides the beneficial way.

But there is one big problem with an ordinary DAO: There is no asset protection. Essentially, you and all of your like-minded DAO compatriots are operating as general partners, with unlimited personal liability.

Hence, the Wyoming DAO LLC.

The state of Wyoming is on a mission to be the best jurisdiction for all things blockchain. And in realizing that a DAO had a legal gap, they had their legislature provide a legal solution. A DAO can now be organized as a Wyoming LLC. You and your partners can now autonomously operate with the solid protection of Wyoming’s very strong LLC laws.

The requirements aren’t difficult. You need to have a Wyoming registered agent and pay the annual state fees. Your official LLC name must include the wording ‘DAO LLC,’ as in Betty’s Plumbing DAO, LLC. You can list yourself, a human, as a manager or you can choose to be algorithmically managed. Meaning your DAO LLC can be managed by artificial intelligence – or AI. Who thought science fiction would ever come to corporate governance?

Wyoming DAO Chart

But therein lies the largest detraction to the DAO LLC. By being algorithmically managed via a smart contract (which is your own LLC’s Operating Agreement) you are giving up some privacy.
Smart contracts operate on the blockchain. And the blockchain is out there for all to see. So by knowing the entity name – Betty’s Plumbing DAO, LLC – for example, someone can go online to read Betty’s Operating Agreement. They can access her operational road map and internal strategies.

Many of our clients prefer their entity’s governance to remain confidential. So when it comes to balancing autonomous with anonymous, privacy wins. A human manager following a confidential Operating Agreement is preferred by most.

To date, we have not formed any DAO LLCs due to this privacy limitation. It will be interesting to see if and when the state of Wyoming deals with this gap in an otherwise unique and useful corporate structure.

Is Bitcoin a Scam? Scam-Proof Your Assets

Scam-Proof Your Assets: Guarding Against Widespread Deception, my newest Rich Dad Advisor book in several years, was released near the end of 2020. Cyber criminality is everywhere, costing people not only financial losses but emotional damage as well. You must be vigilant.

To learn the protective strategies you need against the cyber onslaught you may purchase the book from the RDA Press website.

I couldn’t fit all of the scams into Scam-Proof Your Assets. So the following excerpt isn’t in the book but is important for you to know.

While some frauds become harder to perpetrate due to better oversight, others become easier thanks to technology. One type of fraud that didn’t even exist just a few years ago is that involving cryptocurrency.

To illustrate what this is, let’s establish right now that currency is something that at least two parties agree has value and constitutes a type of payment. It’s a unit of exchange. When they taught real economics you would learn this. If I hold a dollar bill out to you, you see that as valuable because you can use it to buy things. We agree it’s money, so it is. Each dollar bill has a serial number on it, so according to the Treasury Department, that serial number represents legal tender in the amount of a dollar.

Well, in the case of cryptocurrency, a series of numbers—a sort of cryptography—represents an agreed-upon value. That series of numbers is currency, and it’s used to conduct transactions online. And like money, which the U.S. Treasury only produces a finite (albeit inflated) amount of, there is supposedly a finite amount of cryptocurrency. Promoters claim it is a finite amount but there is no intermediary—say the U.S. Treasury or a bank—to authenticate the value associated with that number. So in cyberspace it has value, but elsewhere, it’s a toss-up. You can’t go buy ice cream with it. Its price volatility is very high, making it unreliable. And it’s not a thing you can see or touch. It’s ideal for criminals.

The biggest and most well-known type of cryptocurrency is Bitcoin, though there’s no stopping anyone from creating their own cryptocurrency. In recent years, there are more than 1,500 of them, with more on the way. Because cryptocurrency is just a series of numbers, and because numbers, despite all claims, can be infinite, there’s no shortage.

Without certainty, but subject to animal spirits, the corresponding demand and value go up and down. Certainty arises when the two parties using it to buy and sell things agree on its value. So investment in Bitcoins or any other cryptocurrency is speculative at best. It only has value if people continue to want it and see it as valuable. The jury is still out. For all those who believe in crypto, that is fine. Go ahead and take down the Fed. But, for the rest of us, keep your guard up!

Bitcoin isn’t a scam—whether it has value or is useful is for you to decide. But what is a scam is when some fraudster throws out a lot of technical jargon and makes cryptocurrency sound like some unconquerable wave of the future. They claim they have some special insight to forecast a huge rise in cybercurrency, that it will eventually be the currency. In other words, for all its futurity, it is just another age old big pump-and-dump scheme. In December 2017, that’s what happened. Scammers intentionally pumped the value of Bitcoin so they could solicit investors, inflate the price up, then unload the ‘coins’ at a much higher value.

And many small investors fell for it, dumping all their money into it. Dipping a toe in is one thing, but pouring all your money into one investment is rarely a good idea—even a commodity you can actually see and use and has value. More on this subject in the book, Scam-Proof Your Assets.

In early 2017, Bitcoin’s prices went from under $1,000 to nearly $20,000 by the end of that same year. But then the market fell 80 percent, devastating investors who lost millions.

That hasn’t stopped scammers from plaguing Facebook with Bitcoin ads promising riches to savvy investors. In January 2018, Facebook instituted a policy banning Bitcoin and other cryptocurrency ads, but then later it relaxed those rules, allowing pre-approved advertisers to use its platform for these purposes, priming the pump yet again for a surge in cryptocurrency.

It bears repeating: Bitcoin and similar currencies have little, if any, actual intrinsic value, making it a prime target for crime. In fact, William H. Harris, Jr., founder of Personal Capital Corporation, a digital wealth management firm, reports that about 90 percent of all remote hacking is focused on Bitcoin theft by taking control of computers to mine their coins.

In 2019, a Ukrainian firm scammed $70 million from elderly investors in Britain, Australia and New Zealand. The company’s online ads featured interviews with celebrities such as Hugh Jackman and Gordon Ramsey who supposedly made a killing in crypto. High pressure salesmen in Kiev promised extraordinary returns. And the money all went down a Ukrainian rabbit hole.

“In what rational universe,” Harris writes, “could someone simply issue electronic scrip—or just announce that they intend to—and create, out of the blue, billions of dollars of value? It makes no sense.”

As Keller points out, “I get the idea that some of these ‘Bitcoin funds’ actually own no, or very few, Bitcoins, but are simply the next wave of Ponzi schemes. It’s actually a Ponzi schemer’s dream: Something that most folks don’t understand, but are being led by media buzz to believe it is the next big thing … Note to file: Nothing that you don’t understand is likely to ever turn out well.”

Scam-Proof Your Assets covers the many threats we face from cyber criminals. Everyone needs a guide book against deception.

Scam-Proof Your Assets

Why Wyoming Will Become the New Blockchain Mecca

Investing In Digital Assets: The New Wyoming Blockchain Mecca

Blockchain technology is becoming ever more prevalent in today’s highly technological world, and Wyoming has recognized this. The Wyoming State Legislature has passed 13 bills that will allow it to become the gold standard for blockchain technology, far outpacing the other 49 states. From these bills, there are several noticeable advantages to both cryptocurrency investors and blockchain technology companies.

On September 1, 2019, Wyoming will authorize banks to be “qualified custodians” for digital assets. These custodians are unique because they will respect the investors’ direct ownership of digital assets. Unlike the counterparties that exist with other asset management structures, these digital asset custodians will only be service providers to the investors. It is also worth noting that rehypothecation is illegal in Wyoming. This means that investors can be sure that all of their cryptocurrency investment will be theirs alone, not divided up into interests. All of these laws will ensure that digital asset owners have a legal certainty to know the nature of the custodial relationship and how their assets are treated.

On top of allowing current banks to be qualified custodians, Wyoming will also be the first state to authorize a depository institution to exclusively provide banking services to blockchain and other cryptocurrency businesses. These banks are allowed to start operating as soon as March 31, 2020.

Attracting New Business

To attract business to these institutions, the Equality State has crafted laws that are very favorable to cryptocurrency investors. Wyoming has become the first state to recognize both certificated and uncertificated shares of blockchain stock. The state’s money transmitter law has exempted crypto-to-crypto transactions, and the state’s securities laws have exempted utility tokens. All of this will allow cryptocurrency trading to thrive in Wyoming.

In order for these accounts to gain Wyoming’s legal protections, all that is needed is a Wyoming LLC to hold digital assets. With this easy structure, Wyoming’s favorable laws can apply. For extra protection, Corporate Direct provides a service called Armor-8. We set up the Wyoming LLC and store the LLC certificate in a safe at a Wyoming bank. Because the personal property (the LLC certificate) is in Wyoming, aggressive states like California will have to acknowledge Wyoming law.

Wyoming is at the forefront of something that could have a significant impact on the rest of the 21st Century. If you invest in digital assets, now is the time to set up a Wyoming LLC for maximum protection.