Lithuania Joins The "ICO Ban" Party
More and more countries are rising eyebrows when it comes to ICOs, and, from a certain point of view, I think this is a good thing. ICOs are, primarily, just a way to fund a startup. They just happen to use tokens issued on blockchains, but other than that, they do carry the same risks and, potentially, the same benefits that you get when you're funding a startup in, for instance, cement production.
In a statement revealing Bank of Lithuania position on this topic, one of the board members, Marius Jurgilas, stated:
Virtual currency is an instrument involving high risk, while profiteering on it may lead to significant losses of funds. Therefore, in order to protect the customers of financial institutions, financial institutions legally operating in our country and supervised by the Bank of Lithuania must strictly dissociate themselves from this product type in their activities. An illusion that virtual currencies are supervised or safe can in no way be created.
Lithuania joins countries like China and South Korea, which banned ICOs all together, or Switzerland, which are trying to find an accurate framework for this type of activity.
Just remember that Bitcoin didn't have any ICO when it started, 9 years ago.
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It's gonna be exceptionally fun, when the neighbouring Estonia starts it, too.
The Silicon Valley of Europe doing that would be precedential.
Though I'm not sure what to think. On its own, it sounds good, because obviously there's a lot of scam and "shitcoin", but on the other hand, such levels of regulation may result in slippery slope.
I'm really looking forward to Estonia's position on this.
My view is that they are much more smarter and self-aware, so even if an ICO ban happens, it'd be extremely subtle, solely against the worst of scammers.
Maybe it's similar in China, it's just the media exaggerating it, due to the dictatoric nature of the Chinese leadership.
Same for Russia.
China is currently having their people's congress and are pretty much in "ban all teh things" mode until probably November.
Expect some regulation of exchanges if they loosen up again.
Yes, that's what I meant.
At first, it was so easy even for me to step up on the "hate train" against China, considering ICO ban an immediate, explicit attack on the cryptoworld.
But I had very small knowledge on the subject, and now I see that it's a two-bladed weapon, due to scammy ICOs.
Regulation is a slippery slope, but if I try to adjust my views to reality, I had to realize that some regulation is actually beneficial for the community.
Especially in China, the country which is the most infamous about forgeries, bootleg, scams and the likes.
My attitude to this is that if a coin explicitly wants to provide strong protection against the government then that should be baked into the design of the coin. And, then the holders of that coin can just accept that it'll get increasingly hard for them to exchange their coin for anything else. Fine. There's a crypto out there for everyone.
Sounds valid.
In summer Estonia started its own crypto bank Polybius Bank in connection with a Switzerland.
Not even surprised. The way Estonia builds upon digital technology is wonderful.
I've been seeing a lot more people using decentralized exchanges this past couple of weeks, soon it wont matter what the legislatures say.
This may be good as they are already too many coins with a part of them being useless or scam...
agree
wow super post
Eh this is bad. It's just government coming in and saying people are too dumb to know what to spend there money in. It would be nice if some sort of organization was formed to vet and set up guidelines for ICOs globally.
While I don't disagree that early coins didn't have ICOs the more competitive the market gets the more it's going to cost to create a start-up (going from 1 peron creating a coin or technology to teams).
I think regulation will just increase the need for an ICO. With regulation comes more cost, and with more cost comes the need for more upfront money.
There are a lot of scam ICOs - it doesn't matter what the % is, it just matters that enough of them are happening that it makes sense for regulators to react like this.
Hopefully this will discourage people from launching ICOs unless they have a really really good reason to do so... I'm worried about the ICO bubble.