Many of the ICOs which I participated were shunning away USA residents and anybody holding USA-issued passports. Maybe because they would not want to get entangled with possible legal battle with SEC or any government agency. It can be a big hassle if one day USA SEC would declare that ICOs are not legal. Right now, the SEC has not yet issued any solid pronouncement regulating ICO but we don't what can be in the coming months.
The boom in the ICO market right now is really attracting big and small participants and there is now a trend for niche business to also join the ICO bandwagon. But while this can indeed scam issuers, regulating ICOs can do more harm than good. What we need is a way to do due diligence so we can guide ICO buyers away from possible scams.
Topic: ICO ban for the US citizens - page 6. (Read 12210 times)
because their governemt protects them from scam
Then it is a mistaken title or misleading. It is not an ICO ban for US citizens. It is investment opportunity ban for US citizens who are not accredited investors. But trust me, so many US people avoiding this. HYIP is the best example:)
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To put this into perspective, the United States is quite strict when it comes to investment regulations. Only accredited investors can partake in private placements of securities. While some people would urge all cryptocurrency ICOs are tokens and not securities, regulators will have a very different opinion regarding this matter. A lot of the ICOs we have seen can be labeled as traditional sales of equity.
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Once the SEC will effectively intervene in cryptocurrency ICOs – which is only a matter of time – things will get very interesting, to say the least. A lot of previous ICOs didn’t take the necessary steps to “deny” US citizens from investing. All of those projects and their teams are at the mercy of the SEC for the time being. Violating US securities laws is not something anyone wants to deal with. Additionally, these laws can also be enforced upon non-US companies, which makes it even more important to take countermeasures.
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Once the SEC will effectively intervene in cryptocurrency ICOs – which is only a matter of time – things will get very interesting, to say the least. A lot of previous ICOs didn’t take the necessary steps to “deny” US citizens from investing. All of those projects and their teams are at the mercy of the SEC for the time being. Violating US securities laws is not something anyone wants to deal with. Additionally, these laws can also be enforced upon non-US companies, which makes it even more important to take countermeasures.
And in a more simplistic way:
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In the United States, only accredited investors can be offered private placements of securities, and the onus is on the issuer (in this case, the token sale dev team) to ensure that only accredited investors take part, lest they expose themselves personally and their company to potential criminal liabilities in the United States.
Sources:
https://www.quora.com/Why-are-US-citizens-not-allowed-to-participate-in-Ethereum-ICOs-such-as-Status-im-and-others-Why-are-we-blocked
https://themerkle.com/why-cant-us-citizens-participate-in-cryptocurrency-icos/
Many European ICOs recently that I saw, they all state in their ToS that the US citizens can't participate. Why?
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