> taking on the weird regulatory risk and all the other weirdness associated with Telegram's (IMO crazy) ICO

To make this more tangible, doing an ICO means a prosecutor can personally threaten anyone on the team with violating securities laws. That's a stupid risk to take if you know, as an organization, you're going to fight the U.S. government in court one day.

I watched the recent hearing on cryptocurrency. The SEC guy seemed to suggest that ICOs need to "register with the SEC" as a security. If they do that and talk to SEC how to best do this, then I think they would be fine?

I think Filecoin did something similar.