How does an ICO work now that regulations and laws are being passed to regulate the industry?
How does someone run an ICO now compared to before?
Probably a huge blow in the ICO sector. This will limit the ICOs that participate and spawning everyday. There is an advantage since we can identify some serious and fake one but the problem here are the strict rules imposed in accordance with the law and it will break what you called decentralized.
So what if a crypto had privacy / security / scalability so that no matter what , we couldn't decrypt them even if we tried?
you can read this very interesting news about SEC, Two ICOs, CarrierEQ and Paragon Coin were punished for conducting illegal securities offerings. Both ICOs were conducted in 2017 after the SEC warned that ICOs might be securities offerings based on its ruling on the DAO. You can find information about legal requirements by SEC which is to be complied beofre launching of ICOs or they will catch ICO management in future.
https://cryptoslate.com/sec-cryptocurrency-crackdown-two-more-icos-penalized/It seems like these companies were based in the states. How about Canada? Are we free from the constraints of the SEC?
I doubt it that there's new way of operating an ICO. Most of them are still doing the same, if there are compliant only few of them are doing them.
Why you are asking this? do you want to run an ICO now? things are changing if its come to the mindset of people but with operating an ICO, I don't think that there something that changed.
I'd like to run a ICO , with a new architecture. That is backed by something. I imagine the SEC would try to come after me , or my team. I'd just like to be on the safe side of things and look at the options for doing this. I want to build something great without the ramifications from the authorities. It's in humanities interest for my protocol to create new niches to solve great problems.
In investor side, i think there is not much changes with new legal requirements for ICO. We still need to pass KYC, pay ETH or BTC or fiat to buy token and hold them in our wallets, sell at good price. Some ICO will restrict residents from some countries to join their ICO, most restricted countries now are USA, China.
Have you been audited for your transactions?