Is Google and Illegal Money Transmitter and Securities Exchange?

Suggested Duration: 5 to 10 minutes

Consider a parable by Dan Larimer

"It’s the year 2025. Alice and Bob form a company and issue themselves 1000 shares which they document using Google Sheets. They then proceed to sell shares to the public in exchange for shares of another company which also managed their cap table in a Google Sheet. Everyone has some permission to edit the spreadsheet to transfer their shares from one person to another person.

The only difference between this example and real Google Sheets is that this story is set in the year 2025 after Google moved the backend of Google Sheets to a blockchain.

Today, thousands of less-sophisticated companies manage their shareholder cap tables on Google Sheets. These Google Sheets even log the edit history just like a blockchain. Does the fact that they use Google Sheets instead of Apple’s Numbers or Microsoft’s Excel change the legal nature of the Google Sheets service? Is Google now an issuer, custodian, administrator, and/or money transmitter?"