The answer is a bit “legal”. Securities and Finanzinstrumente is not necessarily something different. Actually, securities (Wertpapiere) are a subcategory from financial instruments (Finanzinstrumente). Investment Assets (Vermögensanlagen) are a further subcategory from financial instruments. Hence, we do not mind if equity tokens are classified as financial instruments, we even advocate this. The issue is not so much the license to obtain, the issue is more that securites come with a lot of other obligations. Many of those we also do not mind, anything that is related to prospectus, publishing information etc. we even very much favor as we stand for transparency and compliance. But one requirement blockchain cannot fulfill and that is a required connection to Clearstream which is the central settlement agency for any transfer and trade of securities. Not only would it contradict the basic philosophy of blockchain of being decentralised, but it would also not be technologically possible.

One more thing - 12Mil Euro was not raised by Fifth Force. It's a capital which still belongs to investors to further use on the platform (it was just commited in the smart contract). Fifth Force is in any way in control to commited funds.

Neufund's CEO just got mentioned in the Frobes article: https://www.forbes.com/sites/montymunford/2018/02/27/five-female-rock-stars-leading-the-crypto-scene-in-2018/2/#11ba79234cd0

Our latest blog post with information how to register on the Neufund Platform to invest in ETOs:
https://blog.neufund.org/how-to-register-on-the-neufund-platform-to-invest-in-etos-618d4d8bd32b

Of course we can respond to your questions. Please find responses from our lawyers below in the text.


We expect that equity tokens are qualified as Finanzinstrumente (financial instruments), but not as securities (Wertpapiere). Instead we believe that equity tokens in the current structure are Vermögensanlagen (investment assets). In this case the offering would be subject to the German Banking Act (KWG) and the Investment Asset Act (VermAnlG).


Currently, we are not planning to enable trading of equity token on our platform. We are focusing strictly on primary market. We plan to organize secondary trading with our partners. However, we think that any platform that allows trading of tokens - regardless whether equity, utility or currency tokens - requires a license as a financial institute (not as a bank).  


We are in discussion with Bafin about this and are in ongoing conversations which exact license is required for the platform in the type and form we are intending to run it. We are confident that we will be able to launch ETOs as planned.


We believe that equity tokens are investment assets (as above). Offering those will be similar to crowdfunding and is exempted from the requirement of a permission as a financial institute. However, we are in discussion with Bafin to get this view confirmed. Since the inception, Neufund’s mission has been to bring the Blockchain fundraising out of the regulatory grey zone, and enabling a fully compliant Blockchain-based investment process. For the protection of investors and companies and, last but not least, our platform will be launched only in a fully compliant setup and framework.

As you can also see from yesterdays European Commission meeting (http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_SPEECH-18-1242_en.htm) where France and Germany already issued common letter on cryptocurrency understanding everything is heading in the anticipated direction. Setting regulations and directions for the future development is all in progress and that's why there is a lot of uncertainty. Projects which are in dialogue with the regulators from the very beginning are part of the movement that's gonna shape the future regulations and directions for the blockchain industry.

This is something we are saying from the very beginning. ICO era will end sooner or later. Fundraising in an unregulated manner when everybody is trying to say that they release utility tokens can't stand.
Neufund stands that it's a kind of security (depending on jurisdiction there might be different classification) if you use tokens for funding of the company (which was exactly said in the latest Swiss regulatory publication). It doesn't matter if your token has a utility function or not.

Tokens that Neufund platform will create are by design regulated and classified in form of securities. Companies that will fundraise on the Neufund platform will have to file a prospectus (which type depends on the funding schema). Normally it's a hard process but that's the point where we have a predefined forms and templates and it becomes fast and fairly easy.
Neufund never tried to avoid regulations but to comply with them from the very start.

So to make the long story short - this was anticipated for a long time and we believe that the future is with the Equity Tokens.

If you have any questions please ask.
We are working hard on finishing the platform and closing deals for the first batch of ETOs. We are still on track to release the platform in Spring this year.

We will soon publish some updates on our blog.

Not really, you decide what to invest in, you have to do your research etc.
Neufund is providing platform for companies on- and off-chain to offer real equity on blockchain. All with legal framework, smart contracts, token issuance, and due diligence to make sure that those are not scams.

Neumark (NEU) has just been added to HitBTC, you can trade with BTC, ETH and USDT pairs: https://hitbtc.com/NEU-to-BTC , https://hitbtc.com/NEU-to-ETH ,  https://hitbtc.com/NEU-to-USDT

As we always say on telegram and all other comm media:
Please don't ask about new exchanges. We as a team can't speculate on price by talking about possible additions if they are not fully dependand on us. If we will be listed somewhere then you will be the first ones to know.

As i mentioned before the idea behind icomonitor is not to valuate the projects but to check if the smart contracts and what is stated in the ICO is actually true and transparent. It's just a step in helping everybody to evaluate the project and potential investment.

Neufund is behind developement of this project but it's fully opensourced and anybody can add their ICO by a pull request in Github.

New addition:

DGTX (Marked: Green)
https://icomonitor.io/#/0x1c83501478f1320977047008496dacbd60bb15ef

Please wait for the EURO ICBM announcements where all details will be presented.

NEU can now be traded also on IDEX - https://idex.market/eth/neu

We don't do valuation of project - we are only valuating smart contract and transparency

When you click on the "see more" next to each ICO you can see what is evaluated during the review

Do you still get an error?

You can create a pull request and add ICO by yourself, the team will just do the review:
https://github.com/Neufund/ico-transparency-monitor#adding-custom-icos-to-the-transparency-monitor

Here are some new additions:

Etherdelta (Marked: Green)
https://icomonitor.io/#/0xCe53a179047ebed80261689367c093C90A94cC08

ANGL (Marked: Green)
https://icomonitor.io/#/0xE1f243A9AbfeeF646bE6BeF7b8C2018276574294

You will always invest according to the current value of ETH vs Euro. NEU issuance curve is described in the whitepaper, so you can calculate how much for each Euro you will get.

Currently we do not support US customers as legal structure in US is much different than in EU. In Germany we have 2 types of securities, while in US you have only one.
We are not saying that it won't be possible to invest into ETOs in the future on our platform, but currently we are focusing to be fully compliant with European laws (which in fact are in compliance with most of the world in this case). When everything will be working we will start thinking about US.