Jay Clayton, the head of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has made an announcement on CNBC with regards to ICO’s. According to the SEC, all tokens or digital assets that were used to raise funds for a venture or company with an expectation of profit, either given by the company formed or exchangeable on a secondary market, are classified as securities, meaning that most ICO’s would fall under this definition.
The chairman also underlined that the agency won’t be adjusting the current rules of the SEC for Initial Coin Offerings. Clayton was not entirely against the technology provided by the blockchain industry, stating that distributed ledger technology provides incredible promise not only in the financial market but in other areas too.
Finally, the SEC representative said that cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin should not be considered as a security, given that they do not seek to fund a project in exchange for a return.
