How to Get Around SEC While Launching ICO

American crypto startups are looking for any ways to skirt the bans and restrictions of financial regulators. However, the regulators are on the alert. It seems that such a confrontation between the "a missile and an armor" will last forever. At least, while there the crypto and the dollar exist.

Companies operating digital assets found a new way to skirt the excessive legal regulation of the securities market and issued SAFT-contracts (an agreement on future tokens) for ICO. Thus, be the cryptocurrency emission, the trade-off is not the digital coins themselves, but the contracts to provide them in the future. Firms conducting ICOs do not violate SEC rules this way, and tokens are considered not as assets, but as utilities for securities.

"Pay attention, - the document says. - Regardless of what the company claims about the token’s characteristics (...), the SEC or the court may disagree with these judgments. The definition of the token’s status should be based on the analysis of facts and circumstances, and self-proclaimed titles do not change the essence".

At the same time, FINRA itself is not a state body. It is a public self-regulatory organization that monitors the compliance with the rules of trade on the over-the-counter securities market. Therefore, its conclusions are only recommendatory.

Whether the market participants take the recommendations of the Service at face value, it is not known yet. But the fact that American regulators are diligently fighting their way against the cryptocurrency is no longer in doubt. The only question is: why do they do this? And it is clear that the point here is not the lack of demand. Every week, about 1,200 bitcoins are "laundered" on the US over-the-counter market, not to mention other digital coins. Moreover, most popular cryptocurrencies are invented on the territory of the US. We can say that the crypto is in many respects their home invention. But in its genesis and morphology, it contradicts the American monetary system so much that it is simply impossible to admit its penetration into the domestic market of the States. So the regulators are rushing about. On the one hand, virtual money cannot be banned, because it will contradict the Constitution, on the other hand, it cannot be legalized, since it will put the dollar, the very foundation of the US financial system, at risk.