Скачать или смотреть The SEC is cracking down on small-time “initial coin offerings,” but the mega ICOs are here to stay

The US Securities Exchange Commission on Sept. 29 charged two companies running “initial coin offerings” (ICOs) with fraud and selling unregistered securities. Both firms were run by Maksim Zaslavskiy, who was also charged with defrauding investors. The regulator said Zaslavskiy claimed his tokens were backed by real estate and diamonds, but that wasn’t the case. The SEC said he had raised $300,00 from investors.
Initial coin offerings have raised nearly $2 billion this year, with teams generating hundreds of millions in a matter of hours with nothing more than a website and promises of revolutionary new products. Regulators around the world have banned trading of crypto tokens issued through ICOs to protect against fraud, but the US securities regulator has remained surprisingly lax—until the latest charges.
Previously, the SEC had simply issued an investor alert, warning consumers that trading in ICOs was fraught. It had also let another notorious case—the Decentralized Autonomous Organization (the DAO)—off with a slap on the wrist. It found that the DAO broke securities law, but didn’t file charges. Some cryptocurrency market observers see the latest case as a sign that the SEC will step up its oversight and enforcement of ICOs.

Despite the aura of chicanery surrounding ICOs, strenuous efforts are being made in the cryptocurrency to legitimize them. One of the most interesting attempts is a legal framework created by law firm Cooley in New York, and firms with vested inte