I might be reading this wrong, but nothing in the article says that the SEC supports ICOs that are not obviously securities. Instead, the more reasonable conclusion is that the SEC will go after the most flagrant violators first, which isn't the same thing as the first statement.

It's not terribly surprising either. Regulatory agencies have limited resources, so they must necessarily focus their efforts on actors that cause the most damage or openly violate the rules. But it would be a stretch to say they show support for all the other ICOs they don't go after.

If this isn’t clickbait then I don’t know what is. There is no new information here, and I don’t see anywhere where it says that the SEC supports ICOs.

I do not know the author, but this is kind of an embarrassment to be considered journalism.

A much better read would be Fred Wilson’s thoughts on the matter:

http://avc.com/2017/09/the-china-ico-ban/

A better headline might be "SEC has not ruled on ICOs that are not obviously securities but there is reason to suspect they might not rule favorably"

Why would anyone put money into your ICO if it isn't a security and doesn't give you some kind of "advantage"? Like, either your token will raise in value or your token gives the holder some special ability. Lacking either of those, why would anyone pay ETH for it?

> your token gives the holder some special ability.

It's that category that the SEC appears uninterested in. Some ICOs (like Brave's) are tokens that entitle you to goods or services on the platform in the future. These are effectively currency scrip (or "gift cards" in the article's terminology), and the SEC seems to consider them outside its jurisdiction.

Anyone ever play clash of clans? ICOs that don't confer any securities-type value on the buyer (no ownership stake, entitlement to a share future profits, etc.) are basically just gems from clash of clans. You buy them in order to interact with the service, that's it.

I suppose the only functional difference between ICOs and gems from clash of clans is that you can resell your tokens on a secondary market because of the decentralized nature of the system. But so what?? It's a solution to a problem that never existed.

Either the tokens can be expected appreciate in value or not.

If not, why buy them now?

If yes, doesn't that trigger the Howey test?

Why do people fund projects on KickStarter or pre-order the latest iPhone? Sometimes people really want something and expect future scarcity, even if there's no chance of price appreciation.

The interesting thing about ICOs in this category is that there's a potential secondary market, so if there turns out to be significant scarcity, the price may rise, but if not, it's worthless (other than for its intrinsic value). But this isn't all that different from GMail invites circa 2004.

the article doesn't say that

This article is terrible, full of opinion and hearsay. Why on earth did it shoot up to #2? I get that if you're invested in all these awful coins you want others to buy in too, because otherwise your coins are worthless, but still.

HN is dominated by cryptocurrency bulls.