“ICOs represent the most pervasive, open and notorious violation of federal securities laws since the Code of Hammurabi,” an outraged former commissioner of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) told the New York Times in a recent interview. And at least this much is true: regulators around the world find it maddening that a multi-billion […]
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Mr. Grundfest is a former SEC commissioner appointed in the 1980s by President Reagan.
ICOs are modeled after initial public offerings, but instead of shares of stock investors are holders of digital coins, tokens, which they can use sometimes in commerce or trade (buy and sell). They’re a finance vehicle operating largely as an end-run around legacy banking and mainstream exchanges — often friction-filled with legal and regulatory restrictions, acting as barriers to entry for smaller startups.
This year, the innovative approach to finance has averaged 50 ICOs a month.
Mr. Grundfest is now a professor at Stanford, co-director of the The Arthur and Toni Rembe Rock Center for Corporate Governance, and told the Times, “We’re waiting to see a whole bunch of enforcement actions in this space, and we wonder why they haven’t happened yet.”