Bitcoin Forum

Hi , Recently most ICOs ask participants for KYC!, why the do?
Is there any official organization regulate them and monitor ICOs?

At first, they asked for a verification of identities to avoid having invertors from the United States or China where ICO are prohibited. Since then, it has become a marketing element to prove the "seriousness" of a fundraiser.

Today, you have to pay attention to these companies that request a KYC, because it could be a scam that would like to steal your private information.

If ICO team plan to use money for developing, they must ask for KYC because many of investors are from USA. It is protective procedure

Yes, KYC is really still biggest problem, even blockchain told us to keep staying anonym in this stuff, so its still become a question in my mind,
why those project that's still related to any blockchain thing, they need a private information of the participants, very disgusting i think

KYC is the very important part of ICO regulation. Everyone who participated in ICO noticed citizenship related restrictions.
In its turn company should be able to provide detailed registration information for ICO participants.

You hit the point! That's exactly it is! My take on this is that you need to pick carefully what ICO you want to participate especially now that a lot of them are purely scams or being deceitful which make their investors believe that they are the real thing but when it hits the market and after a few days it would drop dead.

Fill KYC is a boring, I think it’s the Regulation of the less good, there may be one of the required ico to fill KYC.

This has began after people have started laundering out their money in cryptocurrencies. Actually after the United States securities commission has prohibited residents of US to take part in ICO every ICO come up with a KYC to ensure there is no participant from any such country. Secondly, KYC keeps away scammers and spammers too. But what KYC does is that it gives your pretty important details to the developers and no doubt this can be misused quite easily.

To make sure that joining their ICO is legal in your country, they dont want to get involve in any law problem so their bussines is safe.

KYC in itself is important to ensure the individual is not using funds obtain through illegal means.
It is a tool to fight money laundering and terrorist financing.
As exchanges are regulated, ICO needs to do KYC to ensure their coins or tokens are not used as a means for money laundering or terrorist financing.
I do agree some projects are scam so be careful not to submit your personal details to any project that doesn't look legitimate.
Finding out the KYC partner of the project is important too. At least you know your personal data will be protected and handled properly.

Or a procedure to steal your information also know as identity theft and you need to be careful about complying with the ICO most especially if their business and plans are much shady and its too good to be true and genuine scheme, most of them are just a scam project which some scammers take the opportunity of KYC compliance to get the clients valuable information for their unlawful acts. Most of the ICO is requiring its client most likely if your a USA citizen, so do the proper protocol to research their project before getting involved.

instead to doing that they can implement full IP tracking scrypt on there website. one an IP from USA is trying to register then they can block them.

for me i think its wrong to ask for KYC. just because you want to stop some faction of particular country from participating in ICO does not mean you should implement KYC for everybody. there should be other measure to do this. secondly its unwise for any investor to send people you dont know your Identity document. this is dangerous

ICOs raising $50m and above can definitely afford kyc. A lot don’t even want to go through a legal analysis and proper corporate structuring but that is why the community needs to keep vetting these things and flag them right away.

While the main reason for KYC is to ensure that investors are not from certain countries, it has become a tool to show the world that their ICO is a legitimate ICO and has KYC measures in place.

How robust is the KYC checks, i really do not know.

But in this day and age, our personal identity is an asset and should not be given out easily. So we need to be sure of the legitimacy of the ICO before we give them our information.

based on my research about the global issue about cryptocurrency.
most ICO need to do the KYC or what we call "Know your Client"
because many country ban altcoins or cryptocurrency
an ICO need to know their locations .
so that the Plan of the ICO or Roadmap can't be stop or
got affect by some kind of issue .

It must be some sort of local law that forces ICOs to show the source of the funds they raised, no one pays that much attention to toe next owners of their tokens. That should be only needed for toe gov of the country where the ICO is registered. If you are making an ICO somewhere for example in europe where this process is not that regulated then verifying the identity of US and chinease investors if not your problem.

The KYC problem is indeed a very big problem for ICO participants for several reasons. On the one hand, the United States has indeed imposed a restriction on the ICO, so the companies passing them must view that there are no US citizens among investors.
        However, this should not apply to participants in the signature campaign, especially since the verification procedure begins after the end of the ICO, without any prior notification of such a verification. I think that some campaigns began to require additional data in the campaign signers only for the sole purpose - to reduce the list of applicants for the payment of already earned tokens. This explains why these data are required not at the beginning of the campaign, when the participant is allowed to the signature campaign, namely at the end, when the agreed work is completed and refuse to provide additional information about himself, means to refuse the already earned tokens. In fact, this is a form of fraud, since the campaign does not previously warn that it will require any other information than those indicated by the participant in the signature campaign in a special form before starting the campaign. signatures.

Be careful providing personal documents to these ICO projects.  Remember, if it ends up being a scam, you don't know what they will be doing with your documents.  They might end making fake passports of you and selling them for illegal activities.  I never FOMO ICO's so I avoid the ones that require KYC. 

maybe most of ICo now are having KYC as many of them before who ask for it went SOLD out if not successful.
KYC "know your customer" is actually a disgusting process for the community that MR. Satoshi Nakamoto wants, but its their ICO as everyone said, lets have RESPECT to each other. but i hope they can respect the father of cryptocurrency too.

Good point! And that's why the best time to provide KYC is right after ICO ends.
Especially after you got positive feedbacks concerning tokens distribution among investors.

They are asking for identification because of the regulatories, and maybe is a bad thing, but i think is for better. They are just trying to prevent more scams, hacking, cheating, and to invest their money in development, not sending them to someone who isn't even real. Maybe in the future, every company will be asking for your ID.

It is to keep a track record of people investing into the project, for data analysis interms of gender,country of residence which is very important, to avoid investors from country ban from investing in ICO, base  on there regulation

to help ensure that the people contributing aren't from the countries prohibiting ico

Its too risky to give confidential details about yourself, its right that you might get scammed or hack one of your accounts. But if you really believe on a specific project, maybe try to limit giving the right information. ICO's is great in terms of making profit, but you are risking yourself from this so you better think again.

And then there are some projects that asked about KYC but at the end of the story, they are all turning into the scam project. This KYC story has been implemented by so many caused by the IP restriction can't prevent people from those countries are banning ico to participate in the ico. They can use  VPN or something like that to avoid it.

There is a positive side of KYC, an example of ICO taking this proactive approach is SwissBorg, where "most teams come from the banking industry" and protecting investors and clients is very important. Their KYC process is simple - investors are required to subscribe and provide personal information such as name, address and date of birth. He will then be required to upload an official identity card and proof of residence (such as an official government letter). investor's personal information and proof of identity are then calculated and compared to the legal database.

There are lots of ICO presented in the market and it is quite hard to detect which one is legit or scam it is a good thing that some requires KYC for investors as well as info about developers and owners with that you can get an assurance that their project are good and trustable also KYC will prevent entering of investors that are not in good faith and only join ICO for illegal matters.

Great point. the KYC should be simple and minimal in term of information provided. It is also the symbol of commitment from investors that they are serious enough to provide personal information for ICO project. As long as those information are not used for illegal matter then KYC is ok, in my opinion.

I think this is all because some countries prohibit the use of crypto-currencies and conduct similar activities, and for such companies to be legally passed they introduce such restrictions.

Most times ICO ask for KYC because of the regulations of their business and financial environment. If what such ICO represent is securities in the eye of the law guiding trade and investment, they may be required to have information about their customers for security reasons.

That's a good point..but you should know that most of the times ICOs are pushed by some kind of governments regulations to ask for KYC...
just like exchanges do if we want to move big money...
Another reason for which ICOs ask for KYC is to avoid more than one contribution x person..
So in the end i think this is not so bad...

I think the reason for this KYc thing is to ensure that the participants does not ccame from countries such as US and China that strictly prohibits their citizens to participate in ICOs.

In the United States, there is an illegal decision against Ico. Only identity documents are required in China. Everyone who participates in the ICO sees any citizenship restrictions. In turn the company should be able to provide detailed registration information for ICO participants

In my opinion they would like to complaince AML/Anti Money Laundry so the token not use for illegal action or other fraud activity. But should be KYC procedure only for big investor only so purchase the token will be more efisien for medium to small investor.

It's actually hard to define which size of ICO requires KYC.
Personally I don't see any problem in KYC procedure after ICO ends.
And I don't think KYC somehow hurts our crypto privacy, because we always can buy tokens on exchange later anonymously,
just a bit more expensive. ;)

Since the us and China have banned the ICO, their ICO targets are not for the two countries.
So they need KYC validation to verify which country the participants are from, but most of the time our KYC data security is not well protected.

US never banned ICO. Try to avoid rumors.
There is so called US Securities and Exchange Commission.
They released the strict Statement on Cryptocurrencies and Initial Coin Offerings (https://www.sec.gov/news/public-statement/statement-clayton-2017-12-11)
Many ICO do not meet such requirements aAnd that's why most of them registered outside US and do not accept US citizens.
Simple as that.

The ico organisers are asking for KYC in compliance with regulatory body against it. USA for instance SEC rule is against it likewise China and if you see many ico these days they will state it clearly that people from such countries are not allowed to participate in their ico.

Many-Many thanks for all your responses , Now it's quite clear what they need KYC for and what are risks behind this procedure ,

Usually I go with KYC with ICOs without  any aware, now it down on me how risk it is.

Thanks again

KYC is a way for the project to determine if investors o participants belongs to countries that restrict ICO and crypto-related projects, like the USA. Also I think, this is one way to tell if investors are serious about their dealings with the project.

They are obliged to do so. This is almost to keep stability for their system. This helps them avoid the risk of spam from virtual users and junk accounts. They focus only on incentives for people who really care about their projects and make sure they are safe. This is guaranteed when they sign up for KYC. It is almost a layer of security created by the user himself. The protection layer created by so many people is certainly better than the one that created it

Just because some teams and bounty managers are too lazy to look through theirs bounty hunters. KYC is weird thing really.

It is needed by these ICOs especially when an ICO is based on U.S this is because the SEC has prohibited the U.S citizens to join any of these scammy ICOs,they are just protecting themselves from a threat.In the otherhand ICOs are asking for KYC verification so they can verify if the investors arent from U.S and China so there will be no conflicts between the two.There are some downside with the KYC verification,you wont have any privacy,your id might be sold to others,and it might be used to identity thefts,either way you will still have chance to join or not to.

What if the idea behind KYC is for the ICOs to know who will hold their tokens to get control over it?

Unfortunately yes. Sensitive private information is actually shared to an absolutely new businesses.
There is absolutely no guaranty that it won't be sold to someone else later.
And even US based ICO cannot guaranty certain level of confidentiality.

Some countries have banned icos ,like China , the US ,  South Korea and so on ,  so for obeying the rules of these countries , KYC is needed .

Because in some countries prohibit the following Ico or bounty program and for other reasons then KYC in the practice. To be honest, I'm very uncomfortable and lack confidence in the presence of this KYC, where our identity is known / owned by the organizers of ICO or bounty program. Because there is no guarantee that our personal documents will not be misused. However, because it is a rule then we must obey it. Therefore, before Ico or bounty program, we should be careful in choosing to participate. On the bright side of KYC to reduce cheating in following the bountty program. That's my opinion

If KYC is not introduced by the new projects then that project may face lot of pressure from Govt to shut down the project and the GOVT will be able to know about people who are contributed in the sale and then Govt can ask the people to pay taxes

if you think like that me, I think you are less passive in work. because the project in my opinion is not good in the potential.

After reading your post few times in a row I realized that KYC is a really necessary and useful thing. :)

ICO requires KNOW YOU CUSTOMER (KYC) for security porpuses. It is require so that the project won't have any problem to the investment that they are working for in the future. They do this because some other country specially USA are strick in this kind of investmeny and they don't allow their citizen to join.

Certain countries have initiated ban over ico's. To verify whether participants were from respective countries KYC norms were followed by few ico. This doesn't affect the growth or development of the project as everything is based on the platform it is being developed as well upon the market situation.

For fear of the law.
China has banned ICO, while the us has stricter regulations on ICO, and if they don't want to face these problems, they need to set KYC.