Bitcoin Forum

I've been researching ICOs and I'm wondering why no ICOs appear to accept fiat?

I understand credit cards have the issue of chargebacks, but since an ICO often distributes the coins at a later date, they could presumably issue the coins after the chargeback period has ended.

They could also accept checks, bank wires, transfers, Zelle, etc.

Since many people don't have access to cryptos, I would think accepting fiat would increases the chances of success for their ICO.

I'm assuming it must involve legal reasons such as upsetting the Securities and Exchange Commission, or the potential of being classified as a money service business (MSB) since changing fiat for crypto could put you in that category.

Since many ICOs appear to be either scams or little more than concepts with little chance of success, perhaps it's also to prevent burned investors from taking legal action later if the project fails, since they traded one token without intrinsic value for another token without intrinsic value instead of cash, thereby making a lawsuit more difficult in claiming damages, etc.

Is there anything I'm missing?

Accepting fiat requires some form of connection to the traditional infrastructure. AKA much easier to track and find people taking your money. I don't pay any attention to ICOs so I don't know what percentage are shady people with prebuilt websites, but I assume those types sure as hell wouldn't want any real identity connected to them. As for the rest who pretend to have good intentions, it actually would require effort to accept fiat instead of copying and pasting the exact same thing thousands have done before them.

There are a lot of ICO's that are on the Ethereum platform which is on a smart contact.  Ethereum will be the only cryptocurrency that is accepted for these ICO's and you'll receive your tokens instantly. 

Not all ICO can accept FIAT, maybe if using FIAT is too complicated. that's my opinion.
Anyways ,. easier to use crypto.

there`s a lot more work to do, papers, accountants)

Accepting FIAT bounds that company / person to a certain level of law. For example, Malaysian government does not allow the receival of FIAT deposits except banks. This is stated in the  Banking and Financial. Institutions Act 1989. Unless you are a public listed, you are forbiden to receive FIAT. Its easier for them to receive crypto as not many country regulates this. And its harder for the government to audit.  ;)

It may have to do with the idea of remaining anonymous. If you pay via Credit Card / wire transfer you are leaving a trail to your crypto funds. It could also be for some of the legal issues you point out.

Although,  I've seen some ICOs accept FIAT via credit card and wire transfers, some require a very high investment to accept those payment methods. The issue for me (as I normally invest a small amount in ICOs) was the high fees. Credit card commission could be up to 25% and wire transfers in my country are expensive, so if you are doing a small investment it is not worth it. The best option for me has always been ETH (faster transactions and low commissions).

Hide your trails haha ^


don't send ETH to ICOs from your wallet that is directly connected to exchanges.

There are more regulations related to accepting fiat, even if an ICO claims it is not a security. For example, KYC/AML requirements for accepting fiat vs. virtual coins.

good point

You wrong, there are some ICO that still accepting fiat to buy their tokens.
but it is not much, and may have an expensive minimum purchase.
but why dont you convert your fiat to cryptocurrency first ?

some ICOs accept fiat bro. because they are sure from their project. there are so many ICOs that accept fiat you can search and find them. but i most of cases BTC and other altcoins traditional to participating in ICO projects.

I think it somehow depends on the companies service scope. If a company's market is international and without borders, using a transaction media  that is accepted by all can reduce transaction costs between currency transfers.
The other point is that some countries forbid the purchase of some cryptocurrency (with fiat), so by trading with cryptocurrencies, they can by some content avoid the regulations.

Well more specifically I'm building/researching an ICO for my company based in California.
Most of the participants are likely to be from the United States.

Should I only accept Ether? I should I offer the entire rainbow of payment options?

I don't have any issue accepting credit cards, checks, wire transfers, Zelle, or 40 plus alt coins in exchange for the ICO tokens.
It makes it slightly more complicated but not by much. My general assumption is that the more payment options the better.

It just smells like there is a strong legal reason NOT to accept fiat. However, I can't find any specific rules in United States law that forbides it, except possibly the Money Service Business laws.

The SEC of course has not finalized the rules on ICOs and so there are a lot of grey areas. I just wonder if not accepting fiat is one of those "unwritten rules" to avoid upsetting the SEC.

Thus I suppose I'll just play it safe and refrain from accepting fiat.

It is not that ICO does not accept the law, just because there is no law to restrict ICO, so there are serious problems in the current ICO, and many projects are just a fraudulent project.

Because they can't.
Most of the ICOs remain unregulated, for the simple reason that they can't be regulated and it's going to be hard time for them to search for a country that is willing to accept them.
More then that, it's going to be even harder to find a bank that will accept them, as most of the banks won't because they will be afraid of money laundering.
Accepting fiat for ICOs means that you are legal, and being legal in the crypto wotld is really hard.

Color me shocked.


The SEC has made it pretty clear that using something other fiat does not exempt you from securities laws.

It's my understanding that if the ICO passes the "Howey test" the SEC is likely to leave you alone.

I can't find anything about them caring whether you receive fiat or Ether unless it's an "unwritten rule."

Perhaps I'm just paranoid and I should just accept fiat dollars in addition to Ether.

If you are accepting money/fiat/crypto/seashells as part of some kind of investment in your company, you fail the Howey test.

There are some who accepts fiat but most of them accepts BTC or ETH because the value grows in the future.

I agree with your exposure
this has been a very long discussion. and I do not think it will happen to do crypto transactions with fiat, because of which countries are willing to accept and banks are willing. like what you say.

I have seen plenty of ICO before that are accepting fiat, try to read carefully their ways of transactions or how to invest, some offered fiat as amode of payment, been seen a lot of it in twitter too, maybe not your countries fiat but USD is much preferred in many ICO.

If you wanna do more effort and then you will be seeing some icos were accepting fiat payment through sire transaction to the bank. But the majority of icos saw it as a difficult way to do. If they can raise money through cryptocurrency and why do they need fiat? Honestly both has the same potential. but in the crypto you were getting more security because all of things got encryption.

I could always move from California to Switzerland.

That seems to be a popular place for crypto headquarters.

But it costs like $20 for a 6 piece chicken nugget meal at McDonald's. If it weren't for that.

Or you could raise money ethically and legally.

Some ICOs accept fiat, but there are not many such.
By the way, perhaps you have not heard, but it will soon be possible to hold the ICO taking cash :o
This will be possible thanks to the Dether partnership with Zilla
https://twitter.com/dether_io/status/963793453619478529

Since ICO are held in the crypto community, it is oriented to investors with cryptocurrency, but this is not always the case, I have repeatedly met that projects accept and fiat funds from the investors, it depends on the project itself, as he decides to do.

ICO launchers find it much easier and hassle free to collect the required funds in cryptos.Even the scam project owners find it easier to run with the collected cryptos if the project fails to raise the required funds without leaving any traces for government sectors.

I think some ICO are accepting fiat money too because I saw in some ICO's website in the accepted currencies USD is also included but I don't know they accepting other fiat but the ICO are available who accept fiat money also.

In my own opinion since the ICO projects is about cryptocurrency then it's only natural to accept other cryptocurrency as a payments. Accepting fiat is too much hassle.

Actually there is, for example, BAR, and many more.
Maybe legal reason is the strong factor here and also moving a big funds could be easily done through crypto while through traditional banking system it'll seem that you need to go more implicated steps to did it.
Talking about the legal action if project fails, you still have the chance to report anyone else involved if something goes wrong.
But just wait for ICO 2.0 and we'll see something new.

1. Most of ICO are rubbish, as a result they end as a complete failure.
2. U cannot just take money from people, promise them a big income, and then waste it.
3. This is called fraud and it leads to a criminal penalty in most countries.  
4. Crypto is not regulated and such activity is not leading to any responsibility (however, this is very temporary).

Perhaps the reason ICO is not using fiat money is a very difficult process. Compared to other Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency it is very easy to send money in the form of crypto for investment in ICO.

Most ICOs does only accept Bitcoin, Ethereum, NEO and other Top Altcoins because it's better and more flexible for them to get funds and it's the easiest way to to inventory their sales.
Soft and hard caps are mostly measured by BTC and ETH so investors should convert their money into BTC or ETH first before they could invest into ICOs.
It depends on every ICOs by the way because there are some also are accepting credit and debit cards as their mode of investments.

The coin I'm building is designed to strip the 1% of their political power. The goal or intention is not to make money, the organization is to be a non-profit.

Where bitcoin is a meteor heading on a collision course with the banking sector, what I'm designing is meant to revolutionize our political system.

The mechanism for this is complex.

However, my intention is to build a more local community starting with the California bay area and get non crypto people involved.
Transactions and interactions, while they'll be in cyberspace, the idea is to have a lot of transactions and interactions in the real world also.

Thus accepting fiat in the ICO offers advantages since non crypto people are a large part of my intended audience.

And since reforming the political system is the goal, upsetting the people in power is a real possibility, so the legal issues are important including crossing the T's and dotting the i's.

I do wish we could reform the political system for free without the need to raise money, but unfortunately that is not realistic.

Almost all ICOs today are accepting only BTC and ETH but back in the days - ICOs were accepting investments mainly through debit and credit cards because most investors have not yet access with Bitcoin and Ethereum.
But now, there are still ICOs who do accepts cards but their main goal as soft and hard caps are BTC or ETH quantities so if we're gonna invest this year to any ICOs it would be easier if we'll convert them first into BTC or Ethereum than using our debit or credit cards.

There are many ICOs out there which accept fiat payment.

I invested into VALID with Fiat. There was an pay by credit card option.

In my opinion, if ICOs accept fiat, they would need to reveak their banking info and more identification which can cause problems not only to iCO developers but also put investors in severe problems. In addition, the ICO project will nit remain decentralized anymore because the time you are sending fiat, that means you are willing to be tracked by third parties

I have seen ICOs to accept fiat. But this is probably for bigger investments.
Also, transfer in crypto is way too cheaper than transfer in fiat. Also, there is a loooot of paper work if the payments are in fiat. And there is a legal obligation between the two parties if the transfer is in fiat. Probably the last one is the main reason why most of the ICOs do not accept fiat.

Pretty much sums it up. It's just too inconvenient.

Also, doesn't it make more sense to invest in a crypto project with crypto? ;D

I think it is due to tracking issue that ICO developers avoids to happen. And also changing fiat into cryptocurrency would take fees and those fees would lessen the value of the token worth that they are buying.

Or they don't want to have a paper trail such as this individual if he turned his crypto into fiat would be liable for paying taxes on those earnings where he is from.
https://twitter.com/crypto_sarah9/status/968451876063797248

Turing it into another crypto currency...
Well that is another story.
https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/80l63k/50_cent_to_judge_i_have_no_bitcoin/

In my own opinion, ICOs will never accept fiat in exchange of their tokens during crowdsale in the sense that fiat transaction is way complicated and sluggish than using cryptocurrencies which is seamless and fast.

Ico dont accept fiat because of laws, by law you will need to pay 20% or something to government and because of that, nobody want to share their profit to random guys.

Maybe because Fiat and ICO are not on the same page? Bank transaction to ICO requires a lot of stuff and exchange value is not stable as well. Securities and additional payment are something to be considered too since bank are bound by laws. ICO developers does not want any hassle from the bank when shit happens.

Looking at the question, congratulations on the question was a good observation, i believe in safety first and second as mentioned above, the tax rates are very high and this varies from country to country. Another factor that we can analyze is that with the purchase of another currency for exchanges in ICO or Ethereum, it drives the market generating flexibility in general.

Due to the composition of some Stable coins they can facilitate fiat acceptance in ICOs.

AAA reserve coin is an ERC20 compliant asset-backed cryptocurrency - collateralised by cash, gilts and AAA-rated credit investments. Proceeds from the issuance of AAA coins are placed into Arc Fiduciary Ltd - a ring-fenced Jersey-registered company - and invested into cash, gilts and fixed income; across multiple fiat currencies to support the value of AAA coins.
This composition is mainly for our aim of having real value stability but has other advantages.

AAA reserve Currency can add value by serving as a medium for ICOs, allowing fims to accept a wide range of fiat as well as cryptocurrencies without the need for bank accounts; this should increase their ICO sales and increase relative perception. 
This is because AAA Reserve is backed by a large range of fiat meaning that it can accept and be exchanged for a large range.
AAA can be used either via white label or directly through sending AAA and in doing so offer to conduct KYC/AML on their behalf to comply with regulatory requirements.

Furthermore, for ICO partners who want to preserve their proceeds as AAA and want to pay expenses such as rents or salaries in local currencies AAA can facilitate this. (For international ICOs)

More information available on our website at www.AAAreserve.com (http://ww.AAAreserve.com) or email us hello@aaareserve.com

We are ready to bridge the gap between fiat and cryptos and provide this service now.

There are some ICOs that accept fiat but most of them accept Bicoin and Ethereum