Bitcoin Forum

Hundreds of startups are reportedly being “secretly” targeted by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for their involvement with initial coin offerings. Companies that participated in ICOs are now scrambling to clarify whether their token constituted a security, and, if so, whether it was properly registered with or exempted by the SEC.

Yahoo Finance and Decrypt claims that “Hundreds of startups that did token sales are finding out they’re in violation of securities law— including many that were sure they did it the right way.” 

https://news.bitcoin.com/hundreds-of-icos-being-secretly-investigated-by-sec-claims-report/

it looks like the SEC is starting to act and is starting to pay attention to the rampant online fraud through the way token sales. I myself support the SEC's activities, because all cryptocurrency investors do need security in investing, although protection for US citizens is very high, but everyone outside the US always considers the policies taken by the SEC as a benchmark, whether the related projects are good for investment

Let see how it goes but I think this will solve some issues in the crypto space with ICOs scam everywhere , regulation is just not needed in crypto but human are unpredictable and are full of unexpected things , so putting the ICOs dev in watch would not be a bad thing so as to safe investors from lossing their funds while trying to make profit .

 It's been far too easy for scammers to defraud people in this space.  Regulation is a good idea but please don't make it so that Crypto is equated to Venture Capital and have crazy minimum limits on the amount you can invest like there is now.

Because the majority of them are claimed that they have achieved SEC approval and SEC was taking an action to prevent them all. these guys must learn what they are doing. SEC wants tp secure their investors from scammers. Recently a scammer from Thailand has caught by SEC and he will be deported to the Thailand again .

why must the SEC? Is there no other regulator? We know that ICO does not come from the United States and investors from the United States are prohibited from participating in ICO, so what is the relationship with the SEC? even though it is clear that there is no relationship with his country and does not harm him at all.

to be honest I really agree with SEC actions that are very anti fraudulent investments and other scammers, but I don't agree with their greatness to do whatever they want and can backfire for the crypto world.

Things change radically, the adoption we have been trying to achieve has to go into these procedure first before it can be achieved. Is this the reason for the new dip of BTC since yesterday? If I just knew I would have dumped everything and forget crypto for a year before investing again. The worse case is that, the price will stay this way for probably at least 2 years. Glad I didn't quit my day job.

Well, it's not really a "secret".
SEC has the authority in the US to investigate any company that deals with any kind of asset, whether that be a security or not.
All of these ICOs being surprised the were in violation of laws just goes to show how incompetent and terrible the vast majority of ICOs are.

Also, I am glad the SEC is looking into these things and coming down hard.
Our market has been crashing and burning all year and now is just like a slow turtle.
We need new money to come into crypto and normal investors ain't havin it, we need institutional money to come in.
You now, the traditional wall street guys, hedge funds, vcs and stuff.
The only way they would seriously jump in is if there were less risk.
More regulation and structure means less risk means more institutional money coming in.

Its better to do it than watching those ICO projects get our money and then gone, so its better that SEC would investigate this fraud ICO scattered nowadays, me too a victim of this fake ICO. Been able to promote their projects and turn out that they are scam, im so shame for promoting it, i should be more cautious nowadays of what ICO have working products, than riding on the hypes.

In a way or other it is a good step too. With SEC taking interest in ICOs and cryptocurrencies, people will become more confident over the time.

This is to be ascertain at the moment. Actually the SEC have every rights to do so, why? Imagine the loss of funds happening on some ICOs that claimed to be scam. Scary and disappointing on the crypto industry. Bitcoin was followed by superb projects but now I can see the trend that ICOs being introduced just to gain off some money from raising fund, the concept of blockchain are being used in the process where same tech are just being added up to. I know technology keeping the vibes by new projects but with same concept? nothing new here instead an additional project with other's name.

Well then. It is good to hear being in cryptocurrency world. We need to get assurance from any company start ups and ICOs that we are working in a legitimate projects. SEC secretly imvestigating them will make them wary of what they are doing. This may avoid scamming people and be careful with what they are doing.

It is not unusual for the government to observe and check everything related to finances. It's all as old as the world. You can not escape only from death and taxes. In this context, money.
For scammers this is bad news, but who knows for sure what is behind these checks. Nobody will tell us the truth about this.

Scam ico are too rampant, if SEC can track down team which sold fake ico already on market. Those intending to organise fraudulent ico will think twice before they organise fraudulent ico it is welcome development.

I'm glad they did and it's about time that they do an investigation on these ICO because investors are losing their investment because some of these do not have a product or a deceitful roadmap, and they end up nothing to offer, just check the coinmarketcap hundreds ICO are now dead.

It is probably false, but I wish it were true so that scammers at least think twice before trying to commit a non-punished easy money grabbing as last year.

Yeah totally agree with you man, the crypto community is dying to get some good regulation, that is why this SEC activity is necessary. But after all the main reason why those companies are leaving IPO for ICO and choose cryptocurrency is because the regulation of traditional investment is not investor friendly and at the same time it limits the potential earning of the company. And this make the investors leave IPO and move to ICO, and demand company to do the same.

Now it will become more difficult to deceive investors, more precisely, to say deception will probably be punished at least somehow, I think that this is good!

i remember last year that the ICO hype was heated i said that it is illegal in many countries to do this kind of fund raising and initial token offering by selling virtual tokens but some people didn't believe me and they were confused about the ICO bans that were happening!
this is what i meant. they have always been illegal but apparently people don't mind it yet.

That sounds like many problems have come up.
I am curious how this affects the ico market.
It is determined by such measures to give less and less ico.

this should be kept on page 1 to warn all ico investors that their investments can be reduced to dust at anytime

ethereum got away with it in part because their distriubution had a large POW stage that is still on going.

I would guess a HUGE % of ICO's will be closed down in the near future or forced to be exchanged on the fringes for dust prices

POW (that were not obvious premine instamine scams) will be fine

Don't assume because you are a top 50 ico you will be safe.... those are the biggest targets and I expect them to be getting the most attention.

If I were a good dev team right now I would look up buying up OLD and fairly distributed pow projects that are now very cheap and developing those.

As i know many project is avoiding investor from US, so who is 'hundreds' since only few ICO allowing us citizin to participate?

But i think this is a good news, because if many project proven to be guilty, i think in future the number of scams project will reduce

Was it expected any other way? I mean as a foreign person outside of USA as an investor I do not have to care about the SEC and I can just invest into any ICO I want and than sell it whenever it hits the exchanges however as the ICO based on USA they have to consider the fact that they are getting millions sometimes hundreds of millions of dollars which means they are a securities option and they need to react and pay taxes accordingly.

Which means sec will investigate them, this "investigation" is not against some crooked companies, its just investigation just to see if they are what they are and as long as they are not scamming anyone they have nothing to worry about.

Good thing to know about that since a lot of ICOs are useless and they only do that because they want to accumulate a lot of money from investors even though the project is useless.

With all of those process done by the SEC, it should be able to remove all kind of scam project, cause there will be something that keeping an eye of projects that opening an ICO.

What the hell this sec sticks its nose and fingers everywhere?! If I'm not mistaken, sec influences only U.S. citizens. Why everybody is interested in its news? I guess, cryptomarket is an international economic entity, and it should get away from sec and other government agencies! They are done telling the market how to develop!

in my opinion it was a good step if the SEC investigated ico and sentenced ico to a proven scam. it can reduce the scam, and can make the ICO industry in the crypto market can be even better.

I think it's good that someone controls it. Recently, a large number of scam ICOs have appeared, and their creators feel unpunished. The ICO should be legally regulated so that scammed investors can defend themselves in some way and have the opportunity to recover lost money if they discover the malicious intentions of the creators of the project.

In my opinion, if SEC had been investigating ICO's, I hope all of the ICO's should have been investigated just to check if it is a legitimate ICO or not. With SEC's involvement, I believe this could be a big help for the ICO investors such that they could not be scammed anymore by some scam ICO's out there. I would be in favor on that matter, at least scam ICO's could no longer operate in the crypto market and can no longer fool people around.