How SAFT are your Cryptocurrency Tokens?

by Patrick Tan on ALTCOIN MAGAZINE

William Lau wipes the sweat off his brow, as the heat from Hong Kong’s noonday sun plasters his frayed white singlet to his bony back. Lau’s shoulder blades and subtle musculature betray a life of physical labor.

In this city of over 8 million people, Lau swims through the sea of humanity unnoticed, looking for disused card board boxes and aluminium cans for recycling.

Like so many other residents of Hong Kong, Lau is just another face. And in a city fueled by avarice, time is opportunity and for many, right now there is no opportunity to understand how the seventy-year-old Lau came to this predicament.

He’s simply one of thousands of Hong Kong’s “forgotten” residents.

But it wasn’t always that way.

About three years ago, Lau, who had made a living for over six decades selling newspapers and packets of tissue paper at the corner of New Street and Queen’s Road Central in Hong Kong’s Sheung Wan district was told about a way that dozens of people were getting rich — it was called “ICO.”

Or initial coin offering.

An illiterate emigre from China’s neighboring Guangdong province, Lau had fled China to Hong Kong in search of a better life, eking…