China’s recent ban on cryptocurrency crowdfunding should not deter future research on blockchain technology that backs those “coins,” the country’s central bank said.

Last week, China became the first country to outlaw raising funds through virtual currencies that are built on this young and more secure computing technology. The People’s Bank of China (PBOC) and six other regulatory bodies deemed so-called initial coin offerings (ICOs) illegal, leading to the almost immediate closure of at least two-thirds of the country’s 60 ICO platforms.

The legality of competitively proof-of-work mined coins are not at all afflicted by recent events.

So prior rulings about the legality of Bitcoin are irrelevant to the issue about ICOs.

The difference compared to prior Chinese regulatory actions, is that this appears to have been a coordinated event amongst regulators in many nations.

And the ETH ICO madness was entirely out-of-control and risking naive investors’ funds in a plethora of scams. It became a new Xerox copy ICO every day scam. The nations had no choice but to act. And surely the SEC and other nations will follow. I think Asia acted first because their governments are less democratic and more authoritarian, so they can act quicker. The democratic nations will follow because their regulators have the same responsibility to their citizens. The wheels just move slower in the democratic nations. Asia is finely oil machine that is more efficient than the West now.

The issue is not exclusive to China. China, Canada, Russia, South Korea, and Singapore have warned about coming enforcement action. The SEC already recently warned in the context of The DAO. Obviously the recent events are coordinated between regulators in all these nations including probably the SEC.

Click here for a longer explanation of why proof-of-work mined tokens are not investment securities and thus not afflicted by recent events.
The above link also discusses Ethereum’s ETH, Ethereum ICOs, and others.

It is also very important to note that pre-existing ICO-issued tokens, are illegal to trade and can be delisted from exchanges. Your home country can make it illegal for you to trade them. The above link explains this is more detail.

Please stop spreading the incorrect information, implying that ICOs will come back or that pre-existing ICOs can still be traded. Most people do not want to go to jail or suffer fines. Even if they regulate ICOs, these will only be tradeable on registered exchanges and will not be spendable as cryptocurrencies (i.e. not allowed to be traded decentralized). Thus these new regulated ICOs will not be very useful. It will not be the same.

Many shady exchanges and their largest traders are likely to suffer fines and threats of criminal prosecutions. Today is only the beginning of a massive global crackdown. The gears may move somewhat slowly but over the coming year there will be massive changes to the crypto ecosystem. All the hard-headed will have their fingertips burned up to their armpits as necessary for authorities to stop the rapid proliferation of investment securities scams.


There will be no greater fools to sell the ICOs to, when they are not legal.

The ICO scam model depends on selling to newbies who come in and believe these 100s of Xerox copy ICOs each have a chance to become the next Bitcoin or Ethereum.

Nobody is going to speculate on illegal ICOs, because there will be no mass market for them, thus no way to hype them.

And it is not just USA and China that are banning ICOs. Same as was the case for FATCA (a USA only law), it became enforced in every country in the world, because the USA threatened to penalize every nation that did not comply.

We’ve already got Canada, Russia, China, Singapore, South Korea, and the USA warning about ICOs.

You’d have to be blind to argue this is not a critical mass.