Colorado Exempts Cryptocurrencies From Securities Laws—We Need Such Lawmakers In India!
In an exciting development coming from the USA State of Colorado, their Governor Jared Polis has signed the Digital Token Act which exempts certain cryptocurrencies from securities laws allowing people in Colorado operate out of the strict securities regulation requirements.
DH reports that Lawmakers in Colorado introduced SB19-023 earlier this year to remove regulatory uncertainty surrounding cryptocurrencies. Passage of the Digital Token Act clears the way for entrepreneurs to emerge in Colorado and to build new technologies, strong ecosystems and decentralized applications that can use utility tokens to power various activities.
Cryptocurrencies that have a “primarily consumptive purpose” with qualifying use cases and which are available for offer, sale or transfer will no longer face possible prohibition under article 51.
“‘Consumptive purposes’ means to provide or receive goods, services, or content, including access to goods, services, or content.”
It should allow certain business that tend to raise capital through sale of digital tokens to do business legitimately and flourish. The act makes Colorado a crypto-positive state enabling digital entrepreneurs to continue building on their ideas without facing unnecessary regulatory hurdles.
If this isn't crypto-positive then I'm not sure what is. Enabling companies that build blockchain powered systems with or without tokenisation is key to growing the software industry as the technology paves way for greater innovation in this domain.
In India despite a Supreme Court order asking the Indian government to come up with regulations for blockchain and cryptocurrency sector, the ground reality feels like we're years behind any innovative ideas on tackling the revolution in digital currency and payment systems.
The time honoured tradition on being a sheep needs to change and our government needs to be pro-active about these disruptive technologies and allow legitimate businesses to flourish by either allowing them to self-regulate or bring policy that harbours innovation. Colorado Governor has done a fantastic job enabling these things in his state.
We're not far away from the next Supreme Court hearing ourselves. But coming back to the topic of Colorado government's new act.
CCN cites that this pro-bitcoin law was passed against the background of Colorado’s sweeping crackdowns on sham ICOs. In November 2018, the Colorado Securities Commissioner filed 20 cases against allegedly fraudulent initial coin offerings.
This is important because there is no dearth of scams in this space. Infact a huge majority of projects fail and are often scams, Ponzi-MLM schemes devised as a crypto ICO of sorts.
We've had many such issues in India as well prompting the RBI to campdown heavily on cryptocurrency business causing issues to the legit cryptocurrency exchanges in the country.
Similarly, research from ICO advisory company the Satis Group showed that a whopping 81 percent of ICOs launched since 2017 were scams. Regulatory scrutiny is heating up around the world at the same time that bitcoin and the crypto industry are gaining traction.
That kind of numbers are hugely alarming in an industry such as this which is in its nascent stages. People should invest with the hopes of making their money grow but scammers are bound to get you if you aren't careful.
Overall this is a great move that I hope will yield greater innovation from Colorado in the years to come and something our lawmakers can learn from!
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Not that I worry too much what politicians think but for the people of Colorado this could bring jobs.
@hilarski the Rocky Mountain region has already started to become one of the brightest blockchain hotspots in the US between Wyoming and Colorado. Charles Hoskins announced earlier this year (I believe) the relocation of the legal base of his company Input Output Hong Kong (IOHK) from Hong Kong to Wyoming. Much of it is due to the legislative changes happening in both Colorado and Wyoming. ShapeShift has it's US operations based out of Colorado , as do a handful of other larger blockchain projects, and a host of smaller projects and startups. In recent history, Colorado elected a crypto friendly governor who was one of the very first politicians running for office which accepted crypto for political donations when he served in the House of Representatives. My feeling is the future Silicon Valley of blockchain is going to be in the Rocky Mountains. Awesome time to be here.
I was hoping you'd be around, see this and comment! Thanks for all the details. It's amazing to learn more about what's going on there.
It's also really great to see you around. We should catch up sometime on Discord. :)
@firepower I'd love to. I hope things have been good on your end since we last caught up ages ago.
Been alot of talk among a few of out here in Colorado around putting up a STEEM related event at some point in the near future. I think @carrieallen right now is looking to do something this summer in Colorado Springs (about one hour south of Denver). If you'd like I can keep you posted. In the event you don't have my Discord ID it's lpfaust#8848. Shoot me a friend invite, so I can catch up with you later.
Sure thing. Will catch up with you there. :)
Hey!
It's true (though we started LATE) I'm planning a smallish (only 100 spots this year) meetup- THE BLOCK PARTY in Colorado Springs.
Within the next week I should have a ticket site up and ALL information (and then some) will be available... including sponsorship opportunities. 😍
Thank for the shout out! Hope to meet you there!
June 20-23, 2019 Colorado Springs, Co, USA
Wowwwww this sounds like it will be fun! I will keep an eye out for the details in the future!!
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Yes and I think that's a very good thing in general. :)
Given how much market activity is manifesting within blockchain economies like Steem... this is probably a great move to bring more business into Colorado.
That would be ideal actually.
Wowwwwww living in Colorado this was really awesome to see! I knew he was pro-crypto but I don’t know he would sign a positive crypto law in the first few months of being in office (:
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@alexvanaken you should see the governor's record on crypto when he was a Representative for the state of Colorado in Congress. I think the key highlight was the Cryptocurrency Tax Fairness bill he cosponsored back at the end of 2017 which got killed in the last hours of the final tax overhaul which was pushed through in 2018. There is alot I disagree with him on, but his stance on cryptocurrencies and what his plans for Colorado are relative to that tech I am 100% behind.
Nice man yeah I don’t really follow politics as much as I should, but crypto headlines sure do get me feeling Steemy! lol... Hopefully he keeps this up and it’s not just a facade.
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If you're on Telegram, here is a TG chat called CO Blockchain Legislation which has constant updates and chatter about everything happening in Blockchain. There is a regular government task force looking to integrate blockchain tech into most of the procurement an other aspects of government to push greater transparency. They have at least one regular meeting each month, and I've seen as many as four. Check them out if you are interested. It helps me keep up with alot of what's happening here in Colorado.
Wow it's a great news,it will be even great ,if this will also happen in India.
I think the government of India must also have to show interest in this matter and move forward to exempt exempts cryptocurrencies from Securities Laws. Get all the details related to Sharp distinction between cryptocurrency and traditional currency on https://steemit.com/cryptocurrency/@theninehertz/sharp-distinction-between-cryptocurrency-and-traditional-currency. It will provide all the major difference between the digital currency and traditional currency.
Hope so we could see this happening in India as well. ....
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One small step for Bitcoin Giant Leap for Crypto 😁
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Such lawmakers will surely arise in India, it’s a question of TIME.
You got a 58.70% upvote from @ocdb courtesy of @firepower! :)
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