Malta have very well defined laws about ICO's on the books from November 1st, the UK and USA have been disasterously vague about guidance for what constitutes a security so far, which doesn't help anyone except the bankers.

I think the issue of what constitutes a security is very well defined in the US...it’s just no one has framed their token in such a way it’s not a security (despite all the claims to the contrary) and otherwise the ICOs have not complied with securities laws because...well move fast break things.

I’m not sure why a company doesn’t just come out and do an ICO: a) with a token that’s not a security or b) a token that is a security and comply with securities laws.

> a token that is a security and comply with securities laws

Because if you do that, there's no point having an ICO. Just do an IPO - the token is an expensive, pointless distraction from their mission to democratize the world's dogsitters, or whatever they want to do.

> Just do an IPO

A token is virtually frictionless and costs nothing to setup or trade globally, dividends can be paid out directly to token owners.

An IPO is an incredibly lengthy, arduous process requiring a small army of lawyers and accountants simply to offer shares to a restricted subset of sophisticated investors in one country.

You are referring to an STO and not an ICO.

Because the only reason for tokens is to create a little confusion that allows people to think they'll be allowed to violate securities laws.

They have, see https://coinlist.co/

If your innovation requires a new monetary system, it is probably a Ponzi.

No they haven't. They've said from the beginning that if it looks like a security, smells like a security, walks like a security and talks like a security, then it's a security.

It's people trying to play the, "Well, it's different cause it's on a computer!" game that are muddying the waters.

That's my impression too.

Emily Post had this great rant on how people act like every new technology is exempt from the rules. Her examples at the time was the cellphone in movie theaters. Everybody knew not to talk loudly in the movie theater before the arrival of cellphones, but suddenly plenty of people thought it was ok to a) have a ringing phone, and b) answer it. Eventually everybody got it together again and nobody does that anymore. People figured out how to generalize politeness for the new technology.

It seems like the same deal here. Investment regulation applies when you're selling a piece of your operation. It still will.

The scale of filesharing was irreversibly expanded by the internet, and in particular, by BitTorrent. Some technologies fundamentally change the difficulty of enforcing prohibitions against particular types of activity.

If the analogy you're drawing is mp3s to money, it's not a good one. Money has been digital much longer than music; SWIFT was formed in 1973. [1] The MICR E13B font, the machine-readable numbers seen at the bottom of every check, was adopted as a standard in 1958. [2]

Further, since cryptocurrency's use in actual commerce is a rounding error, I don't think cryptocurrencies are even at the mp3 level yet. To be useful to most people, cryptocurrencies need to be turned into real money, which makes enforcement easy enough. It's especially easy here, in that ICOs are big public launches.

Really, anything taking significant amounts of money from non-accredited investors needs to be quite public, because individually they don't have much money. Which again, makes enforcement easy. And also makes it clearly under the domain of the SEC unless they are careful to exclude American investors.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Society_for_Worldwide_Interban...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_ink_character_recogni...

No I was making a more general point: that technology can fundamentally and irreversibly change the relationship between people and the government, resulting in certain classes of laws becoming easier or harder to enforce.

Did this general point have some relevance to the discussion? If not, I would like to take this opportunity to point out that water is generally wet, and that food can fundamentally taste good.

It's directly relevant to your point that technology has a honeymoon period of being exempt from the rules before the rules adapt to reimpose the previously in place controls. I was saying that's not the universal progression.

again, the only place ICO would be safe is those under the rule of Russia or China, otherwise all other countries face extradition to the US.

US has proven again and again they will touch anyone anywhere (except china and russia), and its a losing battle to go up against an organization that has unlimited resources with capabilities that grow constantly.