Issuing An ICO In The US? —One Company’s Experience

A disclaimer — we are not lawyers and we are not providing legal advice, we are simply sharing some of the experiences that we had in the process of creating our security token ICO, Property Coin.

If you’ve been reading the crypto news lately, you might have seen that ICOs are getting some bad press in the US, with many people, including regulators, considering them potentially illegal securities and exposing them to heavy scrutiny from regulators.

In a prepared statement to Congress on February 6, 2018, SEC Chairman Jay Clayton said “When investors are offered and sold securities — which to date ICOs have largely been — they are entitled to the benefits of state and federal securities laws and sellers and other market participants must follow these laws.” Strong words from the head of the worlds most influential securities regulatory body.

You might be considering creating your own ICO. Perhaps you have an idea for an innovative blockchain application, or are intrigued by a Kickstarter-like alternative to raise money for your company and / or project. Maybe you’ve heard that raising an ICO is a path to easy money. While this might have previously been the case, if you are based in the US and want to follow all applicable laws, it’s now a much more difficult journey. But it is possible. In the spirit of open source code that is the foundation of blockchain technology, we figured we would share some of our observations and experiences with the world.

ICOs don’t neatly fit into the traditional security classifications that have decades of laws, best practices and issuance templates to rely on; and likewise ICO advisors are figuring out much of this as they go along, so together we all forge a new path.

Continue reading here:https://medium.com/property_coin/issuing-an-ico-in-the-us-one-companys-experience-aeca56d6444d