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RE: Why ICOs Will Revolutionize Crowdfunding
The limitations I can see...
- Under Regulation A companies will be permitted to offer and sell up to $50 million of securities to the general public subject to certain eligibility, disclosure and reporting requirements.
- Requires registration in all 50 states.
If you want to be limited to receive no more than $50 million. If you want to register in all 50 states. And there might be other limits, such as requirements to be an accredited investor or limits to how much a person can invest.
How does an ICO avoid these limits?
References
I would assume ICOs that hit these limits didn't do so in the US market only, and thus would not be restricted by US law. Ethereum didn't take any NY IPs for example I believe.
Okay, but that places a new restriction based on location and now developers have to restrict IPs. This hurts both American token holders and complicates matters.
THAT is true. It is an issue of Americans being limited by laws that don't extend to the rest of the globe. So yes, your assertion here is absolutely correct for American holders, and ESPECIALLY NY citizens. However, this is why ICOs serve the global market, and not JUST America. Remember, you're talking about 330 million, when there are 6.4 billion others in the rest of the market.
Okay, but Americans cannot take advantage of the ICO model like the rest of the world can. I know the UK has favorable laws for equity crowdfunding but the United States has some of the most restrictive I know of.
They can, they just can't use it beyond 500k in the same way that people outside the US can. It's not unusable in the US.
Yes, US laws are very restrictive concerning investment, but a lot of it has to do with "anti-terrorism" bullshit. The anti-terrorism propaganda has affected legislation a LOT. The terrorism argument is one of the biggest hurdles to crypto adoption here.
I didn't hear anything about anti-terrorism and I don't see what it has to do with investing or crowdfunding. I'm not sure I follow.
AML/KYC laws are there to prevent money laundering. The biggest issue with encryption is that governments don't know "who" is doing what with capital.
That is why you had David Cameron coming out talking about trying to get rid of encryption altogether.
If you haven't heard any of the anti-terrorism rhetoric associated with digital currency, you have to go back to 2014/2015 when ISIS was emerging into the mainstream. It's not a recent conversation.
I have been in the crypto scene for a while, so the evolution I am talking about isn't something that happened in 2016. I have been in crypto since 2011, and been a developer since 2014.
The issue with "terrorism" and "crowdfunding" or "investing" is that money can be laundered if invested through non AML/KYC channels.
The entire crypto industry was not using AML/KYC standards up until about 2015, so there is absolutely no way to know in fact if any terrorism got funded by crypto, or how much. In that regard, the number could be 0 just as well, but without data, it is a hypothetical framing used to scare people into restrictive legislation.
So, it's not that the terrorists are ACTUALLY using crypto...that is what the US government/UK governments were saying in 2013/2014 to try to scare people away from adoption.
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development-professionals-network/2015/feb/09/terrorism-money-laundering-know-your-customer-financial-inclusion
https://www.ctc.usma.edu/posts/how-terrorists-use-encryption
This is true for things like "online gambling" though, so it's not unique or exclusive to crypto.
Online gambling has a LOT of ip restrictions globally, especially in the US.
Plus these are NOT the same as securities. It would be the equivalent of Blizzard Entertainment selling 50 million worth of presales for a video game.