Are websites like r/WSB illegal due to market manipulaion? Note: I am not invested in HTZ or GME. This is not investment advice and is in no way to be construed as investment advice. Websites like r/wallstreetbets can cause herd investments in various stocks. This is not unique to WSB and also exists anywhere stocks are discussed publicly (twitter has many accounts touting investment ideas). Recent examples being Hertz and Gamestop: https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/hertz-stock-price-skyrockets-since-filing-bankruptcy-traders-global-holdings-2020-6-1029285231 https://www.cbsnews.com/news/gamestop-stock-price-volatility/ Are the websites, and the advice they &quot;appear&quot; to give, illegal? Is this market manipulation or could one be accused by posting on these websites as a &quot;market manipulator&quot;? Or, are the websites fully legal and are just &quot;opinions&quot; that others reading can construe in any way they want. I am reminded of SEC vs Lebed: https://www.nytimes.com/2000/09/21/business/sec-says-teenager-had-after-school-hobby-online-stock-fraud.html http://laweconomicscapital.com/2019/01/more-on-internet-stock-manipulations-sec-v-lebed-2000-revisited%EF%BB%BF/ Thank you for your interpretations Edit Coincidentally, this article just came out: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-01-26/reddit-fueled-rallies-like-gamestop-s-defy-easy-crackdown-by-sec?srnd=premium
united-states That is going to depend greatly on the circumstances. In the US generally anyone may express an opinion on the value or merits of an investment, indeed that is protected speech under the first amendment. However, a person with an interest in a stock or other security who publishes an opinion or statement intended to deceive people, with the further intent of profiting by the deception, may well have committed securities fraud. If the published text contains false statements of fact, known to the author to be false, or that the author knows have not been checked and might well be false, that is additional evidence of such fraud. There are other cases in which such posting of an alleged &quot;opinion piece&quot; might be criminal or an actionable tort. But that would not make the site illegal. It would be the specific acts by specific people that would be illegal. Only if the site were routinely used for such unlawful purposes and seemed to have no legitimate purpose would one be likely to say that the site was illegal, and even then it is a stretch.
This is not "libel," which is a form of defamation (publishing a false and defamatory statement that injures another). "Bait and switch" is a type of violation of the Massachusetts Consumer Protection Law. That Law makes it illegal for a business to engage in any false or deceptive practices, or to perform any false or deceptive acts, in commerce. Read more about it on the Massachusetts' state government site. If the restaurant's conduct was deceptive and it caused you harm (for instance, you would not have gone into the restaurant and ordered at all if you had known you had to order a drink to get the favorable price on sliders,) there may be a violation.
The stock exchange deals in two broad types of things: shares in companies (or other organisations) and derivatives. The first is easy to deal with: buying and selling shares is not gambling - ownership of part of the company passes from seller to buyer. The value that they agree on represents their valuation of the company at the time of the trade; into this will factor all sorts of things that are speculative and ill-defined. However, this is no different from people agreeing on the price of a block of land, a ship or a prize bull - each party evaluates their expected future income stream and decides if they will agree to that price. Derivative trade, however, can be shown to be financially identical to gambling. However, just because things are identical in one field (finance) does not make them identical in another (law). Derivative trade is legal; gambling isn't. Why? Because derivative trade is not legally a subset of gambling.
There is nothing illegal with doing this (absent specific contractual terms or industry regulations to the contrary in particular cases, e.g. in the case of export controlled high technology products). This is called operating a wholesale business or operating as a broker. Lots of legitimate legal businesses have this business model.
If the ability to get a Pannini is conditioned on buying paper towels for money, then he isn't really selling paper towels for $2 and the Pannini for free, he is really selling a package consisting of paper towels and a Pannini for $2, so it would probably still be illegal. The phrase lawyers and judges use to talk about attempts to create loopholes like this one is "too clever by half", which means: "Shrewd but flawed by overthinking or excessive complexity, with a resulting tendency to be unreliable or unsuccessful."
If only the tip is left in such "fake" money, it would not be theft as there is no legal obligation to leave a tip at all (except in those establishments that add a tip or "service charge' to the bill.) If the "money" is not an attempt to imitate real cash, it wouldn't be counterfeiting (leaving monopoly money for example would not be counterfeiting). The server would be understandably angry. The restaurant might refuse to seat the people who left the "fake" another time, if the servers identified them to the manager, but nothing would require them to do so. This is all on a US basis, I have no idea if tips might be legally required in other countries.
Although crypto space may be little regulated, insurance is in most jurisdictions highly regulated. Any such arrangement would need to comply with current laws on insurance, until and unless modified laws to cover this sort of thing are passed, and then it would need to comply with those. Tax authorities generally allow one to declare &quot;other business income&quot; or &quot;other investment income&quot; without forming a legal entity. I cannot say how such income would be classified in any given jurisdiction. Whether the platform, or some legal entity associated with the platform, would need to be registered will depend on the current laws and regulations governing insurance, and on the way in which teh contracts are structured. A disclaimer cannot prevent one from being sued. The contracts would need to carefully and explicitly state who is liable for what. Programs cannot be held accountable for anything. Legal entities, including operators of programs, can be. If negligence in the creation or operation of a program causes a loss, the operator may well be liable. Programs cannot be sued for anything. Legal entities, including operators of programs, can be. It may well be essential to constitute the &quot;platform&quot; as a legal entity of some sort. Otherwise its operator will be liable for its actions. I cannot be sure. I once encountered a somewhat similar system in which insurance was provided by individuals exchanging contracts, so that in a sense each member insured all the others. There was a company that supervised and provided legal and administrative services to the group of individuals, and collected fees for this. That sounds a bit similar to the suggested platform, but I don't know exactly how that company was organized. The system was called &quot;NJ CURE&quot;. I don't know if it is still in operation.
First of all, this assumes that the debt consolidation firm would be willing to buy, and the CC company willing to sell. With a trial already scheduled, this might well not be the case. Secondly, when (if) the debt consolidation firm buys the debt, they buy the rights of the seller. In many states the trial could go forward, with the debt consolidation firm substituted as plaintiff. It is not automatic that a sale of the debt would postpone the legal case. Certainly if this happened once, it seems very unlikely that a second debt consolidation firm would buy the debt from the first. And as the comments by Moo and ohwilleke suggest, such a scheme would be fraudulent and criminal, if discovered. It might also constitute contempt of court for intentionally abusing the process of the court. Not a good or safe idea.