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You say this, but by most objective measures ICOs look like a mechanism to provide most of the benefits of raising capital (and then some) with none of the oversight or constraints. ICOs are not like a kickstarter for the same reason the SEC cares about them: as a buyer of tokens your capital can arguably be seen as an investment which is expected to generate a capital return based on a market clearing price determined by the value attributed to a going concern. Also if we are being honest here, the high dollar amounts and high volatility we are seeing also matter greatly in terms of guessing if the SEC is going to expend resources on this. Once a few of these crater and hundreds of millions of dollars are lost I'd expect regulatory intervention to happen rapidly. And 2008, 1999, and 1929 called and take issue with your claim that the most important thing for the SEC (and all of us) to consider is startup funding and not the public interest. The exposure of individual investor capital to undisclosed risk, due to a lack of prospectus, legally required accounting practices, financial statements, etc, can cause major negative effects on all of us if and when capital is mis-allocated, particularly if it is tied to derivatives, is overleveraged, or there are other potential market contagions due to price correlations to similar assets, etc. When you consider the role of the SEC and the history of speculative bubbles, run an ICO without strong legal protections, based on precedent, at your own peril, I say. |