Yes kickstarter could change their charter to do this, but I'm guessing they don't want to because under most state laws, being a mutually-owned company, they would be on the hook to seek/verify *accurate* information about the companies that they invest in and potentially provide some of that information to the (non-accredited) investors. Instead Kickstarter does not seek and does not provide information. Information is provided simply by the project directly to the backers often simply through unverified facebook accounts. Kickstarter is not involved in any way in the information loop and I doubt they want to be so as to encourage a large number of projects and to keep their butts out of the litigation chairs.

GSV is an example of a closed-end mutual fund company that did something like this. The problem as I mentioned is that the investors are not investing in the companies like Facebook, but in GSV. It would be like investing in Kickstarter, not Oculus. For ever Oculus, there are inevitably duds, and this is why closed-end mutual fund companies like have a pretty poor performance record.

New regulations are being drafted that might change the landscape of crowdfunding over the next few years, but reducing reporting requirements for investments under the $500 level and allowing for more solicitation/advertising. Who knows, maybe if the regulations are liberal enough some organization like kickstarter might take that plunge (but I doubt it). Remember, with this route, you don't get rewards, you get equity and with startup ventures, often equity is less valuable than toilet paper. For example, the "c-level" staff of a startup venture for instance could take a business trip to Hawaii with your funds as a team building exercise and it's likely you wouldn't be the wiser... There's a reason that they restrict this stuff to sophisticated investors that have staff to audit finances and select key management staff and board members.

What Mt. Gox did was not fraud in the US because they were not operating in the US as a bank, only as a money services business which is mostly only concerned with reporting to prevent money-laundering.

What Mt. Gox did was not yet fraud in Japan because they claim it to be theft (someone stole their bitcoins) and there are currently no regulated monetary reserve requirements for such an enterprise (e.g., the mere fact that they didn't hold the bitcoins doesn't constitute fraud). However, it could turn out to be fraud, if it wasn't really theft and they did something fishy and didn't tell anyone.

Even if Mt. Gox was a bank, just because someone bank employee is embezzling money from a bank and if the bank knows this doesn't tell anyone for a month and the bank eventually declares bankruptcy, doesn't necessarily make it fraud (even if they continue to take deposits during this time). It all depends on when the bank knew they were insolvent, not when they knew they lost some money...

If you want a car analogy, you shouldn't generally willing hand over your car to someone that is judgment proof (e.g, no assets, no insurance), because if they lose the car, unfortunately, you are the one that has lost the car... You might try to assert that they fraudulently tricked you out of your car, but that's a loser case...

AFAIK, SEC regulation do not strictly prevent companies from selling unregistered shares to unaccredited investors.
Rules 505 and 506 allows a company to sell unregistered shares to up to 35 unaccredited investors (and an unlimited number of accredited investors). This limit of 35 unaccredited investors is the thing that kickstarter bumps up against.

However, there is another way to do this. It is actually possible to start a "closed-end" registered investment company (like a mutual fund company) that can invest in startup companies as an accredited investor. This investment company could accept money from unaccredited investors and this money can be invested in some startup companies.

Sadly, the track record of such companies is pretty poor.

For a recent example, consider GSV which was able to use this strategy to allow unaccredited investors to put money into Facebook, Groupon, and Zynga before they went public. The problem is that the liquid value of closed-end fund, is not the value of the underlying securities, but the resale value of your share in the investment company. This is because in a closed end fund, you have to sell your share in the investment company to someone else (the fund won't buy it back from you). In the GSV case, the share value of GSV was driven up by the promise of getting in on a pre-ipo Facebook investment, but it then crashed when the Facebook ipo didn't perform as well as expected.

Actually, it's not the amount of money you sell your property for, it's what the "fair market value" is at the time of sale.

Just like the stock that you give to your friend in some other country, you must report the "loss" relative to the FMV from some well known exchange (say like a quote on the close of day of Nasdaq if the stock was listed there). Since there (still) exists some well known exchanges for Bitcoin, I imagine that it would be prudent to use a well established FMV for bitcoin as well..

Of course you could just manufacture your own Bitcoin FMV on your date of sale and use that as the basis of your "loss" report to the IRS on your tax return instead. .. and well, what happens next is unknown.

Ironically, Alaska was sold to the US in part** to help pay for Russia's war debt incurred during the Crimean War (and in recognition that it would likely loose the territory anyways in a war with Britain as well) ...

The reason it took so long to close the Alaska deal (1859-1867) was that the US was fighting its own right-of-self-determination referendum (aka US Civil War) and that temporarily interrupted negotiations. I don't remember how that referendum turned out... ;^P

Fortunately for the US, we kicked out most of the 700 Russians in Alaska shortly after annexing (a small part of the off-color history General Jefferson C. Davis), so there would unlikely to be a vote similar to Crimea the matter of rejoining Russia...

On the other hand, I'm sure some high ranking democrats would be happy to support Alaska going to the other red team to make room for Puerto Rico, so you never know...

** the other part was to pay the debts associated with the 1861 Russian Peasant reforms...

This electronic thinking cap seems like it will be slightly more pleasant than someone having "a little mental handicap radio in his ear" which emits "some sharp noise to keep people... from taking unfair advantage of their brains."

For those that wish for the singularity, sadly there's a 50-50 chance of it slipping into a dystopian singularity of forced equality or a professional sports analogy to "The Dark Fields". These possibilities appear to be nearly upon us and we don't even seem realize it... The spirit of Diana must be smiling... Maybe we should attempt to keep such eventualities at bay for a while by take those things out of our ears, oh wait, maybe that's too late for that ;^)

OR.... you could just put a radio telescope at earth-sun L2 and call it a day. That's where we seem to put all those new fangled telescopes these days...

Putting a telescope (radio or otherwise) on the far side of the moon might make it hard to relay the data back to earth (being able to be bathed in the RF light of the earth also implies the reverse that such a telescope could transmit its data back to us poor folks on earth using RF and not try to relay it back to earth through some other potentially unreliable means.

Considering the sun also gives off a large amount of omnidirectional RF transmissions too, the far-side of the moon is not really dark in that part of the spectrum either (except when it's also pointed away from the sun during a full-moon)...

I don't think you understand. They actually fundamentally really don't believe it. It's like cognitive dissonance you experience in your 20's when you think you are invincible and believe that you won't die because the rules don't apply to you... Some may tip their hats to said rules but still do not acknowledge that there is any risk at all *for them* because the rules don't apply to them (for some inexplicable reason). Think of this as a form of confirmation bias that is part of the human condition.

It's just like teenagers having unprotected sex and then ending up pregnant or with AIDS. Such teenagers haven't (usually) made a conscious choice to take a risk, they honestly don't believe they can get pregnant or catch AIDS (for some inexplicable reason that probably wouldn't make any sense if you say it out loud). Of course the belief is misguided (and wrong), but it is their honestly true belief...

It's just like global warming... *ducks* ;^}

I know some folks who like smoking so much that they dismiss any information that says it's bad for you because they don't want to believe it. Then again, some folks smoke until their 90s, never get emphysema, and eventually die of old age (knew one of them).

I also know some folks who appear to be addicted to all-nighters (like a runner's high, they apparently get some sort of high from staying up too long)... Then again, most of them smoke too, so maybe there's some sort of correlation.

Me, I'm not taking any chances on smoking or any unnecessary all-nighters. Sadly, unlike cigarettes, sometimes all-nighters are necessary (but not many).

You literally have no idea about Africa if you make that kind of statement.

It's a bit anecdotal, but I know several people (about 1/2 of them "white/mixed") who grew up in Kenya, South Africa, and Nigeria. According to them, most people in Africa don't even think about "whites". The biggest problems in Africa today are corruption and war. There are plenty of smart people in most countries there, but they have no access to good schools or jobs. Given the economic situation, many have to work very hard just to put food on the table. Everyone they know seems to want to send their kids to the best school they can (which is usually private) and they try to get their kids to study as much as they can.

The problem is that because of the huge human displacement in Africa (economic, war, etc), there are lots of young kids where their best option is to join a war-gang. This is a sad development, but not because that working hard and studying is a bad white trait.

In my estimation (talking to people I know who live in various places around the world, Africa, Asia, India, Western Europe, South America), this anti-intellectual attitude is primarily an American phenomena (black, white, Asian, it doesn't matter). I don't think you see this in other areas of the world as much as you see it here.

The person that seems to have the most alignment with this message is Bill Cosby.

Sadly, many of the young'ns don't know much about him... Maybe his new show can provide a platform for his message.

Of course, there is selection bias. In the US, nearly every college-bound person takes the SAT. In other countries, on those that want to attend schools in the US take the SAT. Those that think they can get accepted to schools that are in in the US instead of their home country will likely be applying to top schools (why waste your money otherwise), and if they are applying to top schools they will probably be in the set of people that score better on the SAT on average than your average joe/jane college-bound US student.

In my school they used to make the gifted students tutor the remedial students. It actually works better than you think it might as it generally requires more insight into a topic and a problem and the to be able to teach it to someone than to just be able to figure out one way to get an answer...

Of course helping your fellow student is likely a foreign concept to many people (who expect that they shouldn't have to do the teachers "job", ignoring the fact that it's often possible to learn even more by teaching somebody something simple)...

Sorry, that was pointer to BICEP1, this new stuff came from BICEP2 which operated from Jan 2010->Dec 2012... It takes a while to develop the analytics through 3 years of data...

Here's a pointer to the preprint of the "new" paper dated today.