important news about ICOs

[lushlifing]

Security or Currency? Jury to Decide In ICO Fraud Case

A jury will decide whether tokens issued through two allegedly fraudulent initial coin offerings (ICOs) count as securities, a U.S. district court judge said Tuesday.

Businessman Maksim Zaslavskiy is accused of violating anti-fraud and registration provisions of federal securities laws after launching two token sales that officials say defrauded investors.

He pled not guilty in early December to the charges, before moving to dismiss the cases brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Department of Justice, arguing that the token sales did not constitute securities offerings. He further argued that he did not know he was in violation of the law....

More about this article: https://www.coindesk.com/security-currency-jury-decide-next-year-ico-fraud-case/
By: Nikhilesh De

What are your thoughts?

[butka]

It's an interesting read.

As I understand it, the crucial question is whether or not ICO's should be considered securities?

And according to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the answer is yes.

If that's so, all laws and regulations that apply to securities should apply to ICO's.

If you try to defraud your investors, if your sole intention is to issue some worthless coins for your own monetary gain, you should be aware of the consequences.

Within the linked article there is a link to another articles which I find very interesting (i.e., simple test how to determine if an ICO is a security or not):

The Simplest Way to Understand Why The DAO Was a Security