REGULATING THE ICOs MARKET
Brian D. Quintenz, Commissioner of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission from May, 12, 2017, in a recent keynote expressed his position towards ICOs and the necessity of self-regulation that has been recently emerging within the debate on Initial Coin Offerings.
The commissioner addressed the matter in his keynote at the DC Blockchain Summit, a conference organized by the Chamber of Digital Commerce and Georgetown University’s Center for Financial Markets and Policy, that brought more than 600 in Washington, DC. The Summit held in the US capital featured more than 70 global thought leaders that talked on a range of topics, including initial coin offerings, trading and investing in cryptocurrencies, smart contracts, legislative and regulatory trends.
In the keynote Commisioner Quintenz wrote:“ It is my hope that cryptocurrency platforms in the United States will consider the many benefits, including enhanced credibility, that the establishment of an SRO-like organization may provide. Moreover, in light of the global market for cryptocurrencies, and the efforts currently underway in the United Kingdom and Japan, there is no reason why a private, cryptocurrency oversight body could not achieve global significance. I look forward to working together with you and other industry participants to find ways to strengthen the integrity of these growing markets.”
He was referring to the recent launch of CryptoUK, a self-regulating trade body that includes platforms such as Coinbase, eToro and CryptoCompare, formed in order to produce a collective, self-generated code of conduct. The members are expected to sign up to the code with goal of creating a more secure and effective framework for both the operators and the investors.
This initiative is the last to address the issue of a more regulated, fair and safe ICOs market. An issue that Elpis Investments has faced from the very beginning, deciding to participate in the creation of a safer ICO environment from the start: we included adoption of KYC and AML processes in our ICO process.
More recently, the need to face a booming ICOs market with which poorly formulated or totally speculative Initial Coin Offerings are proliferating, reached also the level of state government body, for instance in countries like Japan and Switzerland.
Switzerland in particular is leading the way in terms of regulating the newly created ICOs and cryptocurrencies markets. The Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority, FINMA, published a set of guidelines for the regulation of Initial Coin Offerings: we talked about it in a recent post.
We pointed out how they “represent an opening to real innovators, a platform for those startups that are driving the transformation of the financial and investing markets. In the wake of the multiple alarms raised by regulatory authorities all over the world, the latest coming from the Bank of England Governor Mark Carney, who recently talked of the necessity of a regulatory crackdown necessary to stop the “anarchy” in the crypto markets, FINMA’s intervention feels like a breath of fresh air for the FinTech sector.”
In this sense, the platform created by FINMA’s guidelines responds to Elpis Investments willingness in creating the most transparent investing system possible, and is at the moment the best framework within which operating to give the future token holders the most transparent and safe environment possible. That is why we decided to move our operations in Switzerland, to conduct our Crypto-ICO in a highly regulated and secure system, one that is able to create both for us and the future token holders a safe and transparent business landscape.
In the last year, the numbers of ICOs saw an incredible growth. The USA market leads the ICO race with $1 billion raised in 2017, followed by Russia and China with $300 million. The overall spending on Blockchain-related initiatives are expected to reach $2.1 billion in 2018, which is double that of 2017. According to the recent IDC report on the matter, by 2021 spending on Blockchain is expected to reach $9.2 billion.
The ICOs markets are creating, as said, new complexities and newly emerging issues that have to be addressed by the operators at every level. Both, as we saw, at the level of the companies involved, with self-regulating efforts, and at a governmental level. The need for regulation and transparency is unavoidable to ensure that markets are able to sustain an exponential growth, with, on average, investors pumping in $300,000 per second. At the moment, more than 10% of ICOs’ funds are lost or stolen, particularly due to hacking and to the lack of efficient regulatory frameworks.
Elpis Investments is among the frontrunners in addressing the need of regulated markets and transparency. For us, transparency is a pillar to create a successful business model for the future of investing, not just a mere regulatory matter. We engrained transparency in our AI-based investment system in order to make it as efficient as possible. And we will continue to pursue transparency through an innovative use of technologies in our whole business model, starting from the very beginning with a transparent funding process. As an ICO has to be consistent with the company’s project to be effective: transparency and regulation are the basic conditions to create efficient markets for all.
If you want to join the investing revolution, check our Crypto-ICO atwww.elpisinvestments.com, to know more about Elpis ICO.
Giuseppe Solinas
Chief Editor of Elpis Investments, The first AI Crypto-Assets Investment Fund: www.elpisinvestments.com, info@elpisinvestments.com
