Prepaid phone cards and gift cards can only be used to charge your phone, buy goods and services from the gift card provider. Centralised gift/prepaid terms of service strictly prohibit third party trading or alternative payment use under threat of cancelling the gift cards for a reason. DBCs [Edit: Containing SNT] can be used to buy space on the Safe Network sure, but that is not their only use. They can also be used to transfer “tokens” to an exchange and trade, or pay for anything else under the sun that people will decide to exchange for SNTs. Laws are crystal clear on this type of use: “cash equivalent”. No if’s or buts.
Agreed. It was not a technical decision but a political one: we did back away from SafeCoin in an attempt at duck and cover from regulation. Misguided move IMO as you could call it a Jerry but if it is used in the exchange of general goods and services then it is a cash equivalent. Or are we planning of stifling, suppressing in code any economy beyond just buying hard drive space now?
I do not like or endorse any of this BTW am as happy as the next SN’er to give the middle finger to onerous regulations, but if we are going to do battle with that beast you better be sure what even the basic ground rules are before getting on to the weak points. There are projects out there that are way ahead in this pitched battle (Terra [Luna] for example) - there is a lot to be learnt from their experience under heavy fire.
Edit: Added clarification “DBCs [Edit: Containing SNT]”, since you could theoretically have a DBC containing something else. Perhaps possible to have DBCs that can only be used for puts and nothing else(?) which would appear by the rules to not be a cash equivalent since it would not be possible to swap it for anything other than HD space.