I got the impression that the SEC press release regarding their position on ICO was a deliberate "fair warning". DNotes is taking a very different approach and taking our time to do it right. Consumer protection laws governing the sales of securities are quite similar among most nations. The risk of illegal ICO offering may be just as high outside of USA.
Glad you're home safe TeeGee. Coming from Australia, I'm no stranger to the long-haul flights and know how frustrating it can get when they are extended. I hope your batteries lasted the distance.
I understand where Chase is coming from. Even if this is just a warning shot across the bow, as Alan indicated, it is still a blow to freedom of choice. There will be some innovators out there who only want to focus on delivering a product, and won't bother if they have to jump through bureaucratic hurdles to raise funds. But I think these will be the minority of players in the ICO game.
I've worked implementing and auditing ISO9001 quality standards for a while. This was once seen as a handbrake on a business which needed compliance to gain market share. Then, especially after the standard changed its focus on processes in 2000, it became a valuable tool. At this stage, implementing ISO9001 improved the functionality of a business and made it more profitable.
I image that SEC compliance might also lead to more successful outcomes for genuine ICOs. When having to list and verify staff qualifications, they might discover unprovable claims and avoid a bad hire. When creating a financial plan, they might gain insights into important things that need to be done. And for each other requirement of a prospectus, they might build a stronger and more capable organisation. So in this way SEC compliance could be a good thing.
But I'm also concerned about the thin edge of the wedge. The fact that cryprocurrencies are not controlled by any government and their value is not manipulated to suit the needs of a single country, is one of their attractions. As regulations are introduced to control the industry, the spectre of governmental control over cryptocurrencies is raised. These are likely to include things like tax-registered citizens must declare wallets within a certain number of days and before they are used for trading. Or for national security reasons, miners within their country must vote in a particular way on a hard fork option.
My hope is that some level of compliance will help the good operators to be discovered by investors while making it harder for bad operators to fraudulently profit from the ignorance of others. Do people have a right to be able to invest safely without doing their own homework? I wouldn't call it a right. But people do have the right to organise themselves in a manner that enables them to prosecute people who deliberately steal from them. The ease of international transfer of value enabled by cryptocurrency means that there will always be some country that you can offer an unrestricted ICO from. Maybe the ones conforming to regulations in their host countries will do better because of this.