[Avodah] Heter Iska and "The Howey Rule"

[Yonatan Kaganoff]

For professional reasons, I have been researching "The Howey Rule" and its
applications.

In short (tl;dr) the Howey Rule was the outcome of a landmark Supreme Court
decision (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SEC_v._W._J._Howey_Co.) defining a
"security" and how it differs from a "commodity".

The basic criteria for being a security (and therefore under SEC regulation
is):

   1. It is an investment of money.
   2. There is an expectation of profits from the investment.
   3. The investment of money is in a common enterprise.
   4. Any profit comes from the efforts of a promoter or third party.

(I am personally interested in which cryptocurrencies are commodities and
which are securities.)

IMHO, there is are obvious parallels to "Heter Iska".

In a "Heter Iska", we convert the loan of a "commodity" (currency) into a
"security" (the investment). Once a loan is defined as an investment, then
the lender can receive profits from his investment, rather than interest on
a loan which is prohibited because of interest.

Is anyone on the list-serv familiar with both topics and can let me know if
I am correct in the parallels?

Yonatan Kaganoff
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