Bitcoin Forum

Even though ICO's have lost the appeal lately.

I was just wandering about the legalities. The SEC website confuses me. In the eyes of the SEC are true utility tokens still classed as securities in the USA? Is this why many companies avoid the USA when it comes to ICO's?

If a company from outside the USA releases a token, do they have to comply with SEC regulations to enable usa investors?

I am not from the usa but live here now. Is it a resident or a citizen issue?

The US SEC has a long arm to prosecute, expose and jail any violators so the ICO developers did not include US citizens they do not want the SEC to come after them because it's citizens loses money on their project, so it's better that they play it safe by not including US citizens to their potential investors.

Thank you.

Is the USA the only country like that?

Am I best not to invest in ICO's at all considering I now reside in the USA?

ICOs are never less attractive to us.  The SEC itself has created a better investment environment to ensure that scams do not occur as massively as in 2017 and 2018. Crypto needs to be managed if it wants to survive and develop sustainably in the future.  along with economic activities such as securities and real estate.  Crypto is still a new and hot topic in the mainstream and unofficial newspapers of countries around the world.  For large investors, the rules related to cryptocurrencies will affect their investment decisions.

maybe it is an American regulation because they oversee every stock exchange, and the crypto market is also considered a stock market and needs to be monitored to help investors avoid fraud and huge losses.

I think other countries has also doing that SEC required regulation presently. their local SEC was also setting the guidelines about those ICO's and its token. If i were you i don't want to complicate anything since you are now presently residing in the united states avoid investing in ICO for a while. im sure that there was also some crypto investment base in the United states that already comply with the U.S SEC guidelines so its better to search it now.

Now ICO is not a good choice for making investments, only if you live in the United States, so first try to understand the rules there for crypto how, whether legal or not, if it's not legal then don't invest.

There are 2 things in my opinion that can cause the SEC to intervene on all projects in crypto:
- Use of exchange rates using USD / Bank US / US FIAT / paypal
- Areas of ICO organizers located in the USA.
Why did the SEC intervene to intervene in the crypto project from 2017-2018, because that year it was echoing ICO, due to the impact of crypto growth from 2016-2017 which had sweet results, all eyes were on the crypto at that time, so the SEC was also has the ambition to take advantage of it under the pretext of extracting all defects and ulcers that occur in the ICO including scam projects that are used as their strength to intervene. And now there are a lot of regulations that have arisen after the SEC started working in crypto like KYC. If like this crypto is no longer fun, and we already know that if we play with crypto, we are ready with the risks involved, including project scams. What I'm afraid of is that the SEC will start stalking from IEO. If at any time 60% of this IEO ends up a scam, it is very possible the SEC can get back in.

This is exclusive for US citizens and I believe this applies for everyone who resides in USA so you better avoid investing in ICOs anyways ICOs always lists a number of countries who are not allowed to join which includes USA and I would say SEC has saved many US citizens from scammy projects because ICOs cannot getaway from SEC by scamming US citizens.

Their strict rules are also the responsibility of protecting their citizens.

The SEC can sue organizers and investors if committing criminal proceedings from actions deemed illegal, do not get involved with problems to avoid negative things. They require all new forms of investment in registered regulations, and as we know that the ICO does not meet their requirements.

Of course, each country applies its own rules, not just investment issues, but the most supervised is to transact with crypto as well. For the issue of ICO legality, it seems like all countries can access to invest, because we are currently in a free market. it's just that prohibition, because the state does not want if the population suffered losses due to ridiculous investment.

as far as I know, SEC can haunt projects in which US citizens participate, but I'm not sure about that. if the project creates its own coin but does not comply with the SEC rules, then it can sell its coins during public sale only to people who are not US citizens, so that later they have no problems

if your country prohibits cryptoqurrency then the main problem is the government in that country. residents or citizens generally will always follow the regulations of their respective countries. if the American state legalizes the cryptoqurrency industry and the citizens welcome it well then that is positive news for the crypto market especially for users in that country.

If you are a developer, looking to raise money from ICO, do not allow any USA citizen or anyone that works over there, I think SEC people are indigenous the way they are going with the regulation of the space, talking with the two side of the mouth, until we have someone in the house or senate helps out and clarify this issue, just warn USA people to stay out of your project

Banning the use of decentralized cryptocurrencies and banning initial coin offerings are 2 different subjects. SEC is saying that it's trying to prevent fund raising (that can be scams) that profit centralized companies. Banning something decentralized on the other hand is next to impossible.

Indeed, no one is supposedly above the law and until the government is not yet well favorable foe cryptocurrencies, one should not test their luck and play it safe. Crypto and regulation do not usually mix well so, it is better to understand and follow well what is only allowed in your country.

I think USA government is also working on new policies regarding crypto and most people think that it will be ease things out and they are expecting a pro crypto policy so once that comes out i am sure crypto will boom and it will eventually be accepted and adopted on the common man level also i think after this new US policy SEC laws will also soften about crypto based projects. So lets see i am sure most of the world will follow the US policy on this crucial subject and most countries are waiting for them too.

Yes many companies are staying away from US because of it's hard stance against crypto and if they found out that your token is security, then they might file a case against the project.


Projects should restrict US citizens so that they can get away from the hands of US SEC, simply as that. So just be careful, I think if you're in the US as a resident, consider that you might crossed the line, just saying.

Its better for most projects to avoid selling tokens to the U.S regardless if its security or utility. US has very tight regulation they really put pressure on projects who sells any tokens within their territories or its citizens.

In Thailand fintesh legislation creates the perfect marketing tool to attract international investors in crypto businesses be audited by an independent government licensed ico portal company; obtaining the license by thailand's security exchange commission and after the licensing process has to fulfill strict compliance requirements.

     Thailand actions it's to inspirinng to all crypto lover around the globe to recharge again with a  trust. When you make a legislation to promote new token legality to attract investors to invest more in initial coin offering or ( ICO ) on cryptocurrency with a high securities and confidence as a holders    

Its a citizen thing, "illegal aliens" dont need to follow SEC rules i would imagine :P
The SEC just wanted to stomp on the uncontrolled fundraising that was running rampant these last few years, so many cash grabs that had no plan but get money :(
So its MEANT to be confusing really, to deter scammers and allow them time to properly regulate (which they now are with massive rollouts of KYC for US custys)
If a place avoided it they just never registered with the SEC, or they worded it right. some projects really are NOT securities as well of course :P

Indeed.
There's quite a misconception between the two. Initial coin offerings doesn't really happen only inside cryptos. It could occur anywhere in the internet, and I think certain countries could regulate that.
Bitcoin, as a decentralized coin, is quite impossible to regulate unless people are thinking of connecting it with 3rd party financial institutions like their local remittance centers and it is almost like 100% guaranteed that it is gonna be under regulation of the government.

To my knowledge, the SEC will intervene if the ICO is open to US citizens. But most ICOs forbid US citizens from participating.
Besides, ICO is no longer in my opinion. the steps taken by the SEC to protect its citizens are indeed quite good because they want to reduce fraud and scams. Maybe there are so many investors from US that they can generate fast funding for a project.

This.

As far as I know, they do have tight regulations when it comes to crypto-related business ever since.

To OP, good to know that you still trust ICOs even if it leaves a bad impression on most investors nowadays because of what happened in the past years. I hope you are doing the right thing in investing though. Good luck!

Maybe in future will also this apply to IEOs but i don't know, well if ICOs will fail what can do SEC about it? I reffer here on a project who will do all and will reach exchange but investors will not buy the coin and price drop and drop. Or SEC only protects investors in case of scam right?

Thank you for the great thread guys. A lot of good info here.

So if a company registered its token with the SEC it would obviously be a sign that its legit considering the steps and huge cost involved with registering not to mention the legal implications?

If a UK company wants to enable USA investors to trade their tokens, they also have to register with the SEC?

In 2017 all of these ICO's came out with 'utility tokens' without any real utility function. These fake utilities are being targeted also.

Part 2 of the question: is there any real utility function that the SEC doesn't consider a security?

I think it depend on the country where that particular ICO launch.  US is strict on ICOs but the scope of their strict approach should only be apply on their country. Like what they did on Libra and Gram projects. They are over confident if they step up on other countries cryptocurrency projects. As if they own the whole world. See if they can do that to China, I imagine the looks on Chinese faces about trolling US. Hate those people from SEC keeping blockchain in the shadows. Get a life buddies!

For now the ICO has lost its glory, many things caused it to happen. Even if that the US government would not want to gamble by joining the ICO project. Surely they will use new ways to get into the cryptocurrency ecosystem to find loopholes to carry out surreptitious centralization. In addition they have realized that if China has begun to conduct research on cryptocurrency, it is not impossible that the US will also anticipate it. Legality will apply when several large countries have started to adopt crypto.

Blanket bans on trading crypto is present in some countries. Check the legality of bitcoin here -
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legality_of_bitcoin_by_country_or_territory
In your best interest, No.

SEC may change its steps again. They are also evaluating stuff as things go on. But overall the market for ICOs has become a bit less hyped than what it was some time ago, so anyway your risk is high on both side - either the Feds come knocking on your door or you invest in a shitcoin that abandons the project after a few years.

That would be a security token if done or just ban USA participants.

Part of the crackdown on fake projects. ICO market is risky business.

I dont think we have encountered such a project. Correct me if I am wrong.

that is why many ICO projects forbid people in the US to invest in ICO, discussing the issue of ICO is actually not only thinking about legality as well, but the security of investors investing in ICO, just look at ICO only done on the project website where investors can directly buy their tokens through their website, obviously there are many opportunities for scammers to do this and eventually run away with investors 'money, ICO seems to have been very unfit for investors' money security and must replace it with a new system to support the project

US are protecting their citizens from investing, i don't know what the main reason is but my friend said that it was because of the scam and the reason was they are not allowing the US citizen to contribute on any ICO even IEO i guess. SEC have a wide range of it handling every single ICO that collected a big amount of money. If the ICO or project failed to submit the worst is the project might stop and so to failed.

We still have to see if this is good for the industry. Japan I can say and even South Korea at least they did it step by step and learn from a lot of past mistakes. It looks good on paper but let us first see what happens when a licensed exchange gets hacked. What will happen to their users will tell us how the law truly protects people.

And now the OP seems to understand quite well how things actually happened in the US with regard to the ICO Legality. On one hand I can conclude that the US is not an ICO-friendly place and there are many companies that move if they dont want to be intercepted by regulations.

So it is not good if you force the will to invest because you will get two possibilities, namely being visited by the authorities or falling into a bad ICO. Now the decision is yours and I think the OP must accept the best advice so far.

ICOs will indeed be easier for scammers to get their place, so if the government takes steps to ban ICO it would be better to secure their citizens.
the fact that in the history of ICO there are many scams in it.

by using the ICO method a lot of scams are happening and it's better for now that you can use other methods like IEO which in my opinion are better because IEO works closely with a trusted and highly reputable exchange place so that the possibility of a scam will be very small.

When banks get bankrupt in any country, government insist that there will be some percentage to give to their customers, however some banks can't really give it back and years passed that nothing happens, government might set rules but it's still the company situation will govern. It is good to have some support in crypto terms from government but it doesn't mean that when we got scam they are able to solve the problem.

Is not solution for solution lol
Ban ico just for secure their citizens yes is true but government must have smarter solutions than just ban

If you reside in the US, then you are also subject to the laws hence you are not supposed to participate in ICOs which didn't comply to terms of SEC. Unless there is no restriction for people in the US and also you are sure the ICO complies to SEC laws to avoid any issue. If you face any issue for instance after taking the risk of investing in non regulated ICOs, you have yourself to blame.

ICO legalities are much improved in 2020 as compared to 2019, 2018 and 2017 and the legalities will further improve with the passage of time. These legalities are much needed to prevent from scams and maintain the positive image of cryptocurrencies.

I am also hoping that ICO will be legalize because its the main reason why we have a lot of investors coming to crypto market last 2017.
I am aware that IEO is already here but the sites are small enough to cater the big demand of the potential investors especially in altcoins season or bull market. with the regulation of ICO, it will fast track the growth of the market which would be potentially help us to see a new ATH again.  

https://www.sec.gov/oiea/investor-alerts-and-bulletins/ia_initialexchangeofferings
all answers are in the SEC official document last January 14, the point remains the red flag for wherever the promoter is located involving US citizens. I have never read anything legal from their regulations regarding the crypto offering system, even they also did not write about STO. If your residence card is not in the US, you can still join ICO and IEO using a privacy network.

yes maybe that's why some projects that originated in America made their ico in another country, maybe because of the complicated requirements so they moved it.
even as Korea did in other countries, maybe Southeast Asia such as Singapore and others.

investors are afraid to ico projects and its not easy to bring back the credibility of ico projects with just that.  Accept that ICO are no longer existing,  another projcets will come replacing sto,ico ,projects.

I prefer projects from the USA with a record of having legality, but if not I will avoid it, many USA projects will end up dead because they are followed up by the SEC

It is not possible to ban decentralized companies but it is still possible to forbid its people to invest, such as the US which enforces KYC policies on ICO companies that want to reach US citizens, this is an effort to avoid scams. Fundraising in my opinion is still legitimate in the US, as long as according to local government regulations and policies, maybe only the US that applies it for now, because they also see it as a business to make money from taxes.

Usually such ICOs will not allow citizens of the United States and some other countries to participate in their ICOs. So they don't need to be afraid of SEC rules, since there are plenty of ICO scams in this market and stealing a lot of investor money and they don't need to be scared of anything. The current ICO is not a good investment choice, IEO is a much better option

It would be really difficult to pass yourself from each and every countries governing ICO screening so it would be better to make a global less strict ICO license which would be valid worldwide while having a stricter on the judiciary the ICO project has it's office in. Both the project and the investors should have a choice about where to be regulated.

The issue of ICO legality is dicey. I know several projects don't allow investors from the United States to invest in their projects. This is simply because SEC could prosecute any project who plays a fast one on united States citizens. The arm of the law is very wide from the United States and could reach out to project owners irrespective of their country of origin. To avoid this issues with the government of United States, they exclude the United States citizens.

I guess they do not want to encounter a problem with SEC, they forbid their people to participate in these kinds of investment and if many US citizens invest and the project run into a problem, they will have issues with SEC and CIA, something that they did not want to happen.

This is precisely what most ICOs did. US SEC is fairly strict when it comes to ICOs which could be caused by the fact that most scam projects last 2018-2019 came from ICOs. They ensured that no US citizen gets scammed off and is partly the reason why ICOs have a bad reputation as well as of now. If this carries on I believe this will be the end for ICOs. They have already been hit several times with issues that greatly degraded their reputation to the general public.

If ever they've already accept the legalisation of ICO then they have the rights on what possible happen and also it would go through government before creating ICO but that was good for us because it can reduce the possible scammer by doing that.

Take a look at what is happening now with the project of Pavel Durov called TON. Due to the fact that the project was selling coins to U.S. citizens, regulators took over it in full.
The project would have been closed long ago and outlawed, but regulators cannot decide on the legal status of the project token.
They would very much like to confer the status of securities on the tokens and call the fundraising illegal so that the project will return the funds to investors in full and send the consequences to Pavel himself.

Alas, these are the realities. Decide whether your token will fall under the definition of "securities" or not will the US regulator, if you happen to sell coins to the citizens of this country.
Yes, that's why many people bypass the US market so as not to interfere with their legislation.

In 2020, ICOs may rise again. I think it is necessary to follow this year well. IEOs were popular last year. I think it will be back to old. The market can be in a cycle, or in trends in a cycle. I think Binance can break dominance.

each country has its own legitimacy towards cryptocurrency, in the USA, Russia, China, Japan, everything is still open to cryptocurrency, but for the USA and China a little different, there are very tight regulations, market prices are very influential if news from that country comes

The US is very cautious about these ICO's they didn't want US citizen to be a victim of a possible scam, US is very strict in everything that is why most ICO is not including US citizen. I think currently most projects don't comply they just exclude the US from the sale. Projects implementing KYC to determined US citizens I guess if you are from other countries like asia and you have ID from asia you can participate even if you are in us now but I am not really sure.

I hope that ICO will rise again and find new ways to convince investors that ICO is not a scary thing.
I want to join some ico and increase my crypto assets.

Have to agree with the SEC here. During the past two years, there have been thousands of scam ICOs and the investors lost many billions of USD worth of funds in them. Ironically, I can still see people investing in ICOs and losing money. I have nothing against the ICOs in general. But from 2018 onward, ICOs have become a weapon at the hands of scammers. They have realized that it is one of the easiest methods to skim people of their hard earned money. And until there is no other alternative to prevent such scams, I am going to support the SEC.

I understand your position of course.

If a company registers its token as a security with SEC we can all agree that it is legitimate?

Where did you get the information that for this year ICO will increase again? because until now investors have begun to diminish to believe in the ICO, and the problem of binance will undermine domination is not a problem because binance is a great and good exchange and makes it able to compete with others.

There is only one project that called blockstack and it's already received approval from SEC but when you are saying you prefer with USA project and it looks like that doesn't make sense caused by the majority of projects that were coming from USA was not getting legalization.
The fact that if USA project must be avoided caused by strict regulation that already implemented by SEC. It looks very strange if you are still preferring to invest in USA based crypto project.

Why is OP complaining about this? USA is the only country capable of standing against this ICO criminals, we should be happy about that because no other country can stand against these crypto crimes, many ICO projects scammers are still at large but USA is doing a good job

Developer not brave guarantee with their legalities of ICO project investment because they know how terrible and bigger risk with investing in ICO although always giving promise for investor their coin keep stable on higher price and listing with bigger exchange market, but at the end of ICO many time delay listing and only brave listed with shit exchange market.

As we know, ICO projects are indeed very vulnerable to scams, and therefore the United States is very closely related to ICO projects.
The SEC is trying to protect American citizens, including people who live in America must follow the SEC rules. So even if you are not
an American citizen, because you live in America must follow the SEC rules. So my advice is that you avoid getting involved with ICO
projects, if you don't want to get involved in legal issues with the SEC.No wonder Libra projects and GRAM tokens are difficult to get
permission from the SEC legality. In 2020 nothing has changed related to the legality of ICO in America.

Not gonna happen, ICO is forgotten for now until another form of fundraising rise from the deep and IEO success relies on Top exchanges, if i see anyone from binance i will definitely invest and sell later for profit, i don't know or understand why people still looks up to ICO

OP, the main problem is when there were investors from US who try to invest in such ico while SEC has not yet allowed it to happen. If there was a company from outside of USA and it's not always if the company must comply with SEC regulation but it's not the right way to raise the funds from the ICO. If the ico wanna accept US investors and it must be registered before under SEC regulation.

There are projects that run an ICO still but the probability of success is not as good as it was before when ICO was a hot trend. And IEO will come to die just like ICO. And there is no assurance that the project that runs an IEO will succeed in 80-100 rate, because of exchanges reputations.

In my own opinion with this certain perspectives, this isn't a citizen or resident issue but it was utterly pointing out a serious reasons behind an ICO or investments related to cryptocurrency. For past years this has been very rampant of scams and fraudulent projects.
By way of protecting the citizens who lived in a particular country, this has been regulated for an outgoing money be sent for cryptocurrency ICO participation.

ICO to be declared legal is gonna be a good thing that would happen in the market, at least this way we can revive the reputation of ICO and investors will be attracted again. There are a lot of opportunity in crypto especially when investing in crowdsale but due to lack of regulation, lots of scams are happening so that discourages the possible potential investors.

If we ever see a legalized ICO, we have two good platform that will exist in the market, its the IEO and ICO and together they will bring fresh money inflows to the market.

We shouldn't be worried about legality of these things in 2020, I mean all these companies could basically follow the legal ones that have done it already and just make the same thing before they even make a website, if they want to be legit and taken seriously that is all they gotta do.

We already have very few ICO and other coin offerings left in numbers, both in offering but also funding as well, people do not like to give their money to coins that are untested, they go on and buy coins that do not collect money anymore and just invest into their future instead, so with the limited amount of money left in the crypto coin offering world, they might as well just do it properly or not do it at all because people are not going to really put up with it anymore.

Now, work continues on around the world, including the United States, on the further classification of cryptocurrencies, and more than once there has been a well-founded opinion that cryptocurrency cannot be under the jurisdiction of the SEC, since it does not directly apply to securities. In many states, it is not recognized as a security. Therefore, it can still change. SEC is one of the US state regulatory bodies and almost every state has a similar body. However, we constantly remove a lot of SEC attention. I do not live in the USA and therefore SEC solutions do not interest me very much. More attention should be paid to the decisions of international bodies on the regulation of cryptocurrency.

I have never seen an ICO that has legality, but if it was developed, maybe the ICO would rise again. it's just that ICO's trust has now diminished, so even though it has clear legality, people might consider it. besides, IEO is better than ICO, so, I think it's good for now, it's just that it takes time to develop.

I do not think there comes more ICOs in the coming future. Are not there enough crypto projects in the market? And what to do with additional crypto projects as the already projects are not implementing what they have been established for (rather they are just involved in something like gambling and price speculation). So what crypto projects should do is they should start enforcing their ideas.

You don't need USA to stand up, but I sort of agree it's good all these regulations are getting in the way of scams. Now I only hope to god the US hunts down all the ICO scammers and we know there are so many also in this forum itself. They're mostly enjoying their wealth now but one day I hope the law catches up to them. Meanwhile, let's all be smarter and not give ICO scammers our money ok?

The one way to revive ICO from it's death bed is if it become legalized, it will take time for investors to start jumping right in again but in time things will become better, for now ICO investment is a bad idea and it need to be avoided at all cost

It's probably exactly that - there are certain regulatory hoops that you'd have to jump through as soon as the thing that you are trying to sell constitutes a security rather than a utility token per se, and it is very difficult to comply with SEC regulations.

We've already seen projects like Kiktoken and so on getting shut down by the SEC and asked to pay a fine because of the fact that they marketed to US audiences, and obviously no company would want that to happen to them.

It's better safe than sorry for sure. You don't want the future of your company being in jeopardy.

I think ICOs ruined altcoins so anything to make them less prevalent is good. Seriously prior to their popularity, you used to be able to find a newly made shitcoin, mine it with your semi-decent computer, and dump it the second it makes it on an exchange for little to no risk. Then ICOs became popular and soon every new shitcoin was an ICO because it's even easier for the creator to make money that way.

To be compliant with the regulators are not easy dude, you must fulfill all of the requirements. This is a good way to survive the ico but the problem is there is no regulatory framework that was fully controlling the ico.
Ico is bad idea when there was no a middle party who will act as an escrow just like IEO platform that already launched by binance. Investors need guarantee if they will receive what they want.
In this case regulation acts as a replacement for the escrow to give guarantee to the investors.

This is often the case where developers will certainly continue to provide good news for investors and also their token holders to keep them willing to buy more or invest in the projects they bring. But in the end most of the projects were registered in the shit exchange which certainly made people think that the developer wasn't serious about developing the project and also only gave sweet promises to the people who participated in it.

This is the current reality that ICO is indeed very unprofitable and always brings problems that don't go away. all because people who seek profits for a moment so sacrificing their self-esteem that makes many investors become apathetic towards ico themselves, because many are misused. but will ico improve in the future? it is still very possible if unauthorized misuse can be minimized by the good cooperation of all of us.

ICO are not encouraged to invest at this time and it is best to stay away early because the risk when choosing to invest will be very high. Currently, many good projects are available in this market so instead of investing in ICO, you should take the time to learn about those projects. By all means, do not trust others when participating in ICO because for me, ICO are rubbish and have no great value in investment.

This should be appreciated as majority of the ICO that came out in the past few years are scams and majority never fulfilled the project and ran away with the money without refunding and that is not the way things should work and it is a perfect decision by the US authorities to ban all these shit shows so that the investors from US will be saved and never fall for these scams.

What you say is true with the fact that is happening now, many are luring the ICO with great results, but what happens is only in vain, I think there are still many other things that we can optimize while waiting for the ICO to become something promising.

I disagree because there are still many good ICOs for investment and failure of ICO projects is a natural thing. because people will choose a quality ICO project and surely there will be competition. so let's think positively so that this year's ICO project is good .

I agree, that many ICOs would have a problem with SEC institution in the future because most of them could be clasified as securities, that would mean sanctions that can endanger the entire project and that is why investors are still afraid of investing into ICOs.

but with regulations that tighten the existence of ICOs, it can also select good and bad projects. and investors should not have to worry about projects that have passed existing regulations. there are advantages as well as disadvantages, it all depends on how we see this year's regulations will apply or not.

Usually most of the projects doesn't have the balls to gather money from the big boys, even if you are based in europe or somewhere else as long as you are getting the fund from US they will definitely come after you and projects doesn't want that.Exactly, in the past day there are tons of quality airdrops but very soon replaced with we know as ICO because it's an instant money grab ( for project that have garbage quality)

yes that's true but the team that will make the ICO project should have completed the permit or other proposals, so you don't need hesitate to join one of these projects.

How am I complaining? I am simply asking questions because as an investor I would like to know everything. Until now it is all a jumble and I havent got a complete understanding of the legalities.

I have a better understanding from some great posts here but still wanted to know the process of registering (to be approved) with the SEC? is it a long drawn out process? Is it expensive? Depending of these factors it will prove to me that an ICO registered with the SEC IS 100% legit. If it costs $30000 and takes 3 months, all directors must provide ID etc then it is SAFE. If you just have to fill in paperwork to the SEC with no cost with a 1 week turn around than it doesnt provide me much more security as an investor.

dont bother about ICO now because this will gone soon as all of them are scammers and we can only count in Fingers the legit ,and actually ICO is one of the reason why people are getting away of crypto world because of their sh*ts and victimizing.
if i were to choose?i prefer voting for how will the community response if this ICO will continue or totally banned promoting here in our forum ,there are many ways to profit here and we can take out this scammers.

the heyday of ico seems to have ended, and I don't think it would be useful to discuss it too deeply, even if it was replaced with ieo, which could be said to be safer, for now it is less desirable, so many projects have failed. for now I think it's better to invest in the top coins, so our funds are safe

Agree, if now we want to invest in the Crypto world we better invest in the top coins like ETH, EOS or BNB. The ICO world is dead now, many people no longer believe in ICO projects, and although now it is trending with the IEO project but I see it does not make investors interested to invest.

ICO has not been too interested anymore because they think many investors are scam projects that ultimately make investors no longer interested, they are more interested when there is an IEO which he thinks is a little safer because it can go directly to the exchange and can get guarantees from the exchange really trusted.

The reason that all ICO projects are avoided for US citizens is because of the SEC. because most of the ICO projects from 2018 up to now are just scam projects. they never want Americans involved in their capital raising activities because they know they may end up paying a heavy price. And as you can see, ICO projects with such policies are often scams. It is now hard for us to trust ICO projects anymore, because now they have many ways to cheat investors. they will promise more because it's just a word. after the Investors sent money to them, then they did everything else and ignored the investors' whine. anyway, I advise you not to invest in ICOs anymore, keep your money safe.

Wrong. The best investment for long term is bitcoin and for short term is any shitcoin that you like, specially the ones you mentioned with the high probability of BNB being a ponzi as in borderline ponzi and EOS being a complete shitcoin with no real usage that is commendable to bitcoin or even close to it.

LOL, IEO is just a rebranding of ICO. Since these people who are wannabe venture capitalists are looking for new method to lose their money the people running the ICOs (read, scams disguised as coin offerings) renamed ICO>IEO to make people forget the bead effects and bad name of IEO. It actually fooled a lot of the investors who are too dumb to use their brains.

Yes, ever since the bad news about ICO spilled outside the market and the ICO update came out, the ICO has been unable to maintain its foothold in the minds of investors, IEO is temporarily replacing this position to regain trust from investors but as you said, this excitement dropped very quickly when the IEO developed defects that couldn't be fixed, even if everything is more legal in 2020, it will still not be able to improve this issue. Perhaps we need a newer update on investment and in the meantime, top altcoins can be included in the investment plan.

I see it as they are trying to safeguard their citizens from scam ICOs. We all know what happened during the ICO era, the scam was too much and although SEC rules and regulations are strict they try as much as they can to ensure safety first. Owing to sec regulations most people from the US prefers going to other countries to host a crypto project, but in all reality I can say SEC really helped to reduce the number of fraudulent projects from taking place. Since ICOs are dead and gone no need to bother about them again.

I agree with you. IEO is now becoming more popular in this market and investors are often interested in having an IEO project appear at big exchanges. I think this type of investment is becoming a new investment trend in 2020 and you absolutely can make a big profit if you are lucky. However, it is not always possible to make a profit as some projects can put you at great risk.

IEO has become a trend in 2019. There have been a lot of successful projects when IEO at large exchanges, but there are also many IEO projects fail because they implement IEO on small exchanges and scam. Ideally, we should participate in the IEO of large exchanges to limit risks

Most ICO and IEO I had invested in always exclude USA and Canada from participating in their project for fear of SEC prosecution and eventually destroying their project. They have a law protecting their citizens against unregulated ICO, so having them as investors can spell doom when reported.

usa or not , i think its always a good idea to comply with sec regulations , that is to add more appeal on your business  .

 although im aware that other ico dont allow other investors or only legal to some country  . i think these ico's are not yet regulated by sec   .  ico legalities on 2020 could be more stricter than before due to the drop rate of the ico's   .  this makes investors trust the project but to some investors , dont like for a project that is regulated  . they still want the anonymous one tho .

Many ICO not get legalities although in their country, they only take benefit how keep trusted each other between investor and developer of ICO project invetsment, they can get many way how to make investor trusted with hist ICO investing project.

I have seen US citizens who invested in ICO, but most of them have dual citizenship. So, they just use other citizenship, which allows them to invest freely. there are also some of them that invest through their friends.

It is normal for every cryptocurrency project, most especially ICo and IEO to include it in their disclaimers that certain countries, such as the US are not allowed to invest, but if they do, nothing will be done against the project team.
This is why some projects prefer STO, but most of them in the space are illegal.

ICOs are really dead these days and many investors don't look in its direction unless is an IEO. Well, i think if a project wants to conduct an ICO  in the US then they would definitely need to comply with the SEC regulations and this rule would definitely apply to both citizens and residents. This is the more reason why no crypto projects want to allow US citizens to participate because by complying to the rules of the SEC if the project turns out to be scam the team members can be penalized.

Many US citizens have invested in projects using other people's data. But now this is not so important, because in the market there are essentially no offers from ICO projects.
Even a new reformatted view of this fundraiser, IEO, is now declining due to its financial insolvency for investors.
All that we have learned over the past few years about fundraising is that very few projects are able to show decent profits in the long run.
Thus, it makes sense to invest only in the short-term, and this is exclusively speculative nature of investments.

In the USA, there is its own regulator called SEC, by going to its website you can read the regulations and how this body works.
I think you know that most cryptocurrency projects do not allow US citizens to participate in fundraising, because no one wants to run into a regulator from the USA.

Those who collected funds from US citizens, as a rule, fell under severe fines and sanctions.
Even Pavel Durov, who had been negotiating with the SEC for so long, was refused on all fronts, and his coin was recognized as a security.

And how can you know without permission to sell securities to US citizens is prohibited.
Thus, now Pavel Durov will have to return all funds to investors and pay huge fines for violating the laws of the United States of America.