I was under the impression that the raising of the 500 shareholder limit was to allow the crowdfunding aspect to be meaningful; 500 investors at $100 a pop is only $50,000 that makes a certain amount of sense.

However, I'm not familiar enough with the securities law of 1933 to gauge what section 302 of the proposed bill ( http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BILLS-112hr3606eh/pdf/BILLS-112... ) means in practice.