CREATING MORE TRANSPARENT AND REGULATED ICOs AND CRYPTOCURRENCIES MARKETS
The SEC Chairman Jay Clayton recently wrote a post about Initial Coin Offerings and Cryptocurrencies, explaining his personal point of view on the matter of regulating ICOs and Cryptocurrencies markets.
Somehow this was an expected step from the SEC, as the ICOs market impressive growth in 2017 alone raised $3.2 billion, with $462M raised in June, $575M in July and a peak of $663 of ICO funding in September.
In terms of regulation, the incredibly rapid growth of the market just magnified issues that were already emerging. Especially in terms of creating a sustainable ICOs market. The increasingly diverse offering of tokens poses more than a question about their legitimacy.
ICOs were intended to be an innovative and alternative way for startup companies to raise funds in order to enable them the development of their projects. An alternative to traditional VC money and directly related to emergent technologies like the blockchain, ICOs seemed particularly appealing for FinTech startups: viable instruments especially for those ones creating technology-based projects.
In this sense, as we noted in a previous post, an ICO as to be consistent with the company’s project or it just becomes a purely speculative operation. And this appears to be the case with a large number of ICOs out there, intended only to speculate and not to raise funds for well-thought projects.
The large market that has grown is thus full of purely speculative Initial Coin Offerings that are not looking for serious investors, those able to correctly evaluate the potential of a project, its strengths and flaws, the team behind it and its vision and expertise.
Moreover, a lack of transparency is plaguing the ICOs market at large: very often the investors are not given a real chance to identify the ICOs deserving their trust, from the ones only trying to profit from the boom of this newly created market. And if it is true that ICOs are new instruments and naturally their market, as much as the cryptocurrencies one, suffers from an almost natural lack of regulation, this does not mean in any way that it is not possible to contribute in building a solid and transparent market.
The SEC Chairman’s intervention seems to be properly acknowledging this lack of regulation and transparency. And, not surprisingly, it then points toward a traditional way of dealing with ICOs and Cryptocurrencies, an attempt to bring them back within the already established framework of its regulating system.
Now, if the SEC’s Chairman analysis is arguable regarding the path it proposes in building a more regulated market, certainly the issues and the needs it identifies, for better regulated ICOs, are indisputably relevant and actually almost inescapable, particularly for FinTech startups like Elpis.
At Elpis we have decided to answer from the very beginning the issues posed by the need to propose a well-regulated ICO. Even if the matter is still particularly fluid, especially in the definition of the tokens and their nature, the need for transparency in the Coin Offering needs to be acknowledged. Thus, we are treating the token already as a security, setting in place KYC and AML best practices. Plus, our tokens will be baked up by a defined amount of shares: we are offering the investors the chance to invest into our project, our team, our vision, with a token that has real market fundamentals.
The necessity of answering the needs of more and better regulated ICOs and Cryptocurrencies markets, is thus a fundamental concern for all the startups that intend to actively contribute in defining the new financial landscape, instead of waiting for a third-party intervention like the one anticipated by the SEC Chairman Jay Clayton.
But the need to answer the demand for more efficiently regulated ICOs and Cryptocurrencies markets is spreading across all the spectrum of players involved, both private and institutional. In this sense the recent decisions of Belarus and Ukraine governments regarding ICOs and Cryptocurrencies can be taken as a positive step in this very direction.
The Belorussian government, for instance, has decided to liberalise ICOs, cryptocurrencies and smart contracts, in an attempt to favour the development of a digital economy in a regulated environment, while different bills were submitted to the Ukrainian parliament to change the legislation currently regulating Cryptocurrencies transactions and taxation, in order to open up the possibility of creating of a legitimate and legal framework of operation.
From well-ordered, regulated and transparent markets, solid projects and startups companies like Elpis can only benefit. And while others are waiting on the side-lines, we will continue to be on the forefront, actively contributing with our own transparent and fair procedures, alongside our partners like CapchainX, in defining clearer and safer conditions for the investors.
SEC Chairman Jay Clayton writes: “The technology on which cryptocurrencies and ICOs are based may prove to be disruptive, transformative and efficiency enhancing. I am confident that developments in FinTech will help facilitate capital formation and provide promising investment opportunities for institutional and Main Street investors alike.”
Elpis Investments has chosen to fully embrace and implement into its AI-based investment system transparency and fairness, in order to offer those “institutional and Main Street investors alike” the highest standards of transparency and safety in our ICO, because investors deserve the best possible conditions to choose how to invest their money.
If you want to join the investing revolution, check our ICO Fundraising at www.elpisinvestments.com, to know more about Elpis ICO and the discounted pre-sale that has started on November 1, 2017.
Giuseppe Solinas
Chief Editor of Elpis Investments, The first AI Crypto-Assets Investment Fund: www.elpisinvestments.com, info@elpisinvestments.com
