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RE: Are All ICOs Now Officially "Securities" According to the SEC?

in #cryptocurrency7 years ago

This looks a bit like a scare play... First of all, it's only talking about the DAO's tokens, not all 'ICOs':

Such offers and sales, conducted by organizations using distributed ledger or blockchain technology, have been referred to, among other things, as "Initial Coin Offerings" or "Token Sales." Whether a particular investment transaction involves the offer or sale of a security – regardless of the terminology or technology used – will depend on the facts and circumstances

That being said, many ICOs are structured in very centralized fashions with a clearly defined group of people behind them (probably a corporation, which means the SEC's rules apply), and if they carelessly make promises about what buying the token entitles one to, then they do indeed run awry of securities regulation.

This is part of the saga of the DAO, and it absolutely makes sense. Standard hegelian dialectic, and the corporate investors in the DAO (the banks) are infamous for using hegelian dialectic to manipulate and control. The precedent set here will absolutely apply to other tokens in the future, but I don't think it can be applied to, for example, bitcoins, which don't represent a promise or entitlement, and so cannot be considered a security.