Crypto Frontline

Although it is widely regarded as one of the toughest financial regulators in the world, The United States’ Securities and Exchange allowed a considerable number of ICOs to function, which shows that the agency is willing to cope with blockchain-based startups who comply with regulation.

More than $8 billion collected

The Commission allowed not less than 287 ICO campaigns during the span of 2018 and all of them combined managed to raise more than $8 billion in funds collected. Unfortunately, all of these ICO projects were available only to accredited ICO investors, which means people with net assets of more than $1 million could participate.

That’s in contradiction with the whole idea of ICOs, which were intended to enable the masses to invest in revolutionary products. Unfortunately, companies needed to comply with the SEC’s requirements and retail investors were unable to buy tokens issued by companies with a great potential to succeed.

How did they manage to get approval?

All the 287 ICOs have used something called the D-form, a procedure which is assumed to simply by a large the registration process. Another important aspect about the D-form is that there is no need to advance registration and it can be issued in 15 days after the first token sale.

The same procedure was used by some projects in 2017, however, there were only 44 token sales, which had raised little over $2 billion. In a period when the ICO market continues to be depressed, it is good to know that some companies are able to raise funds from big investors and comply with regulation at the same time.

In terms of expectations for ICOs in 2019, the optimism is in a totally different contrast as compared to a year ago. Still, since there is the D-form which simplifies the registration with the SEC in the United States, we might see other gigantic projects, like EOS and Telegram during this year.

For the retail sector, the prospects are not too encouraging. We’ve seen the Binance exchange recently announcing a platform for ICOs, which will give a serious boost in terms of reliability to some fortunate projects. The competition will be tough since only a few ICOs will have the privilege to be listed there.

Little by little, people are beginning to realize that simply conduction fundraising campaigns, without complying to any sort of regulation, and without following predefined steps, it’s only a dream and it can’t happen without exposure to risks like scams or thefts.