ICOs are not for US Citizens? Should ICOs reject self proclaimed US Citizens as a way to reduce legal and regulatory risk?

in #icos7 years ago (edited)

Recently a well written Economist article detailed the crypto space as a bubble. In addition, there are many complaining about the ICOs, the ICO model, and there is talk about an SEC over-reaction aka crackdown coming. I consider most of this to be FUD as I do not think the SEC in particular can stop or slow the ICO trend. But developers need to protect themselves from the risks as much as possible and one easy way to do it is to take the path that Monaco VISA took and simply ask all investors one question:

Are you a citizen of the United States?

And they checkbox: Y or N. If they choose anything other than N then they get redirected to a page which says "sorry, your citizenship excludes you from participation in this ICO due to excessive regulatory risk from your SEC".

Of course determined individuals can lie, but the point is they would have to lie to participate and it would provide strong legal positioning that the people doing the ICO did not want to take money from US investors. This is not a perfect situation or solution, and in fact it's a very prejudiced nationalistic solution, but it is better than the BS caps, the FUD, the over excessive hiring of lawyers. Simply reject US citizens and you reject the regulation of the SEC directly.

At the same time it means if something like Monaco VISA is a scam then there is literally nothing anyone can do about it. It wasn't meant for US citizens, so if you lied and gave your money anyway? Then you may have lost your money.

References


  1. http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21722841-latest-frenzy-tulip-mania-gold-rush-or-dotcom-boom-what-if-bitcoin-bubble
  2. https://cointelegraph.com/news/bitcoin-provocateur-to-sec-icos-are-killing-innovation
  3. https://www.mona.co/
  4. https://tokenmarket.net/crowdsale/monaco/confirm_citizenship
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