[madhancr]

Among other things Ethereum is enabling, DAOs and crowd funding is very interesting and already here today. digix.io raised 5.5 mil in 14 hrs this morning! Compare that to pitching multiple VCs and negotiating terms sheets. On the other side, anyone can participate and you need not be a reputed VC to get in. Slock.it will be next. I think they will set a new record.

[xyzzy123]

What is the legal status of funding your company / venture in this way?

[madhancr]

good question but I don't have a good answer. this might help - https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/473vu9/slockit_th...

Ethereum itself was crowd funded and they registered the foundation in Switzerland mainly for legal reasons. The status in US is unclear atm.

and digix is registered in Singapore again for legal/regulation reasons

[Jd]

I'm the guy who created the Swarm platform, Swarm fund and Harvard conference on cryptoequity. The rough conclusions of $100k+ of legal research was that product tokens are highly likely to be regulated as securities in the US but that cooperatively governed organizations are likely to be regulated as partnerships. Notice all the "likely" aspects as this depends either on a clear ruling from the SEC or case law, neither of which exist.

This uncertainty made me withdraw from hosting crowdsales until some precedent was established (I did however, setup two funds that can take positions in crowdsales).

For what it's worth Swarm was a proto-DAO launched on the Bitcoin blockchain in an attempt to do roughly the same thing on the Ethereum blockchain once Ethereum was ready.