Will the ICO craze continue?

ICOs are about to slow way dow and investments in token sales are about to get back to a much more rational pace.

Lots of people have been talking about the ccde fork (today) as being a potentially big deal to the world of blockchain/cryptocurrencies, but it’s starting to look like the SEC ruling last week is the bigger reasons ICOs are about to slow down dramatically (see Perkins Coie report on it here – https://www.virtualcurrencyreport.com/2017/07/blockchain-and-digital-token-update-sec-releases-investigative-report-and-investor-bulletin/)

UNIKRN, the gaming gambling site, had their CEO Rahul Sood issue this statement on their slack

“As many of you know the SEC came out with a strong position on certain ICO’s and token sales. Our lawyer Perkins Coie just came out with their position. Along with them we have seen positions from Cooley and Debevoise & Plimpton. We know that some tokens are in fact securities, while others are real tokens of value or currencies. Unikrn is confident that our token is not a security, it’s never been a security, and will never be a security. We are also happy that the SEC came out with their position, they are absolutely doing the right thing. The cryptocurrency space needs regulation to protect consumers and the broader community.”

This graph says a lot.  VC funding has been behaving rationally all along and with the ICO spike it’s no surprise the SEC issued their ruling.

What that means is that companies like Civic, KnowYourCustomer, Tezos, and AuthenticID who have really clear value they are adding to the blockchain, will be just fine.  It’s the ICOs that have white papers that read like they were written by a college kid (because they probably were) are the ones that are not only about to come to a screeching halt, there may be some legal ramifications.

AuthenticID could end up playing a key role in this – they are attaching the identity of the participants (on chain and off chain) – even when the participants want to stay anonymous – and that will probably allow some ICOs to survive that might otherwise not have.

August and September have some pretty interesting token offerings if you watch sites like TokenMarket- it should be pretty interesting.