This past week, Blockchain at Berkeley was the host to an ICO Financing Conference. Participating at the event were representatives from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
Blockchain at Berkeley is a student run, independent organization dedicated to the crypto and distributed ledger space. The team consists of undergrad students from a wide range of majors.
Crowdfund Insider spoke with Jor Law, a Securities Attorney who operates in the Fintech / ICO sector, who attended the Berkeley event he shared there was no big news but, as we all know, the SEC is intensely studying the initial coin offering market;
“The are collecting info at this point and can’t really give guidance,” said Law. “They are looking not only at registration, but also exchanges, tradability, Broker-Dealer /RIA compliance, etc. [The SEC representatives] confirmed that simple act of listing a token on exchange by itself would NOT automatically make the token a security. Just structuring to pretend a token isn’t sold for investment purposes might not be sufficient if it’s logically deduced that people would be buying to invest. Many questions stumped them because existing regulatory framework doesn’t cover all aspects of blockchain ecosystem. They seem to be struggling immensely with securities vs utility.”
Panel #1 on ICO Structures is Live! #ICO_FIN pic.twitter.com/eBaJP4m6Eq
— Blockchain@Berkeley (@CalBlockchain) November 30, 2017
A day earlier, speaking at the annual SEC Forum on Small Business Capital Formation held in Austin, William Hinman, Director of CorpFin, said that more enforcement actions are on the way – echoing the chatter that has been shared within the ICO securities sector.
With #blockchain, Berkeley student group sets standard: https://t.co/DkXeUU9IaZ@CalBlockchain @SEC_News #tech #SEC pic.twitter.com/FpnO0H1xNW
— UC Berkeley (@UCBerkeley) December 2, 2017
