SEC Chairman: lawyers not telling about “token equals security” principle are unacceptable

Lawyers which promote initial coin offerings have their own, idiosyncratic notion of the U.S. legal system, implies Chairman of the United States Securities and Exchange Commission Jay Clayton responsible for monitoring ICOs and shutdown of illegal ones.

During the San Diego regulatory summit, he told about the disturbing nature of some lawyers who just promote the sales of digital tokens instead of getting a sensible license. Tokens, in fact, are securities in the eyes of law enforcement agencies and financial supervision authorities. He once again reminded that unlicensed securities trade is, quite unsurprisingly, illegal and will be dealt with in a swift manner.

Several lawyers reacted to this statement, most of them supporting the idea that the work of a lawyer must be honest and as long as some law forbids the client to do something, it’s the lawyer’s duty to remind about this. Some, however, note that the concept of patronizing ICO entrepreneurs might scare the securities market and not all future SEC’s complaints towards attorneys might be true. In other words, some attorneys are afraid of a new witch hunt.