It's been five years and I haven't yet witnessed this aggregate market become largely fragmented. What kind of message would be sent if icos could be successfully targeted, regulated and stopped?
Even with the last decline from 2014 to now the market and it's induced segmentations remained quite unified overall with regards to overall price movements.
Even those cryptocurrencies totally devoid of any unique programming have managed to be dragged along with the rest of the tide.
Because the main use case of cryptocurrency thus far is speculation. Yet another example of
useless hype from Open Money without any realistic onboarding paradigm.
Ethereum's entire raison d'être is ICO speculation selling bags to greater fools. There's no adoption for any other use case.
The other use case for cryptocurrency (mostly only BTC) is to move money internationally (legally?) without a bank account, money laundering, and other currently "criminal" activities. Afaik, these are minor compared to the speculation markets.
So when ICO speculation is attacked, Bitcoin's pricing also suffers.
The entire cryptocurrency arena
has become a copy of Dogecoin.
I am first and foremost all for the prevention of icos becoming hypernormalized but with the sec and other financial regulations bearing down on the market, being put up against a new bound in technology, exactly what could they do currently and what ways would they take in which to get it done?
I mean, specifically, where does the sec derive its power from? If its basically policing the entrances, exits and houses under which regulated trade is conducted then they will necessarily be in for a coming adaption.
This technology has the proven ability to entirely displace existing company share distribution (securities as we know them) and exchange methods currently exercised and its medium isn't necessarily secured by a lawful third party designate or human-tended balance sheets. It's secured by a ledger that isn't exactly under their thumbs as nearly as much as a physical construct in which sheets are exchanged.
While I agree that playing nice with existing financial constructs will enhance diffusion into the psychological and physical norms, there is an even gnarlier gap in existing legislation for this market. Effectively - I'm expecting that it really will be 10-20 years before some even begin to catch up wrt to legislation.
...
Personally I don't think the SEC will be able to keep up, but whatever is formed to regulate the likely coming one world currency will. So how would that play out?
The authorities can go after the issuers, promoters, exchanges, and even large traders of the unregistered tokens. The weakness of ICOs is that they're centralized, thus existing securities and financial regulation can be applied (not just securities law but also MLM laws, money laundering laws, etc).
So basically it will become illegal to trade these in G20 nations.
Trading could proceed on decentralized exchanges and issuers could flee to rogue nations or employ anonymity, but will the greater fools buy such illicit tokens?
I think I disagree with you. The truly decentralized, legally issued tokens such as Bitcoin will require a world government and new global legislation to regulate.
But the existing securities regulation in the USA, UK, Canada, China, etc.. will be sufficient to destroy those who are issuing ICOs now. Because there is no way to issue a token such that it's not acquired by citizens/residents of G5 (or G8 or G20) nations; thus, there isn't any need for global harmonization, because issuing/promoting/trading an ICO subjects those fools to multiple jurisdictional jeopardy. Once ICOs are declared illicit by the major nations, they are toast.
If I am wrong, then okay I will eat my words. But I really can't fathom how the authorities can't crack down. I believe the (elite which pull the strings behind the curtain of the) authorities have purposely allowed the ICOs so that those who comprise the "resistance movement" (or otherwise disrespect the authority of the G20) can have their "fingertips burned up to their armpits" (which was a comment from a US Treasury official about the future of goldbugs). Remember what they did to the creator of the Liberty Dollar.
The speculation on ICOs depends on the belief of the greater fools that more greater fools will be coming in to buy.
The authorities will collapse this bubble soon. Mark my words.
Please read this also:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2183804.msg21943715#msg21943715Regardless of the outcome, I think getting organized asap on what I'm proposing (see the above link and other posts in this thread) would be prudent. So we can capture fundraising while this bubble is still hot (before the potential coming bubble crash) and help investors move into a paradigm that is likely to remain legal and also to genuinely succeed in onboarding and moving crypto out of speculation and into mainstream. I'm very serious. But I need help to get some momentum. One 52 year old person (
trying to rehabilitate a messed up liver) can't do all of that by themselves. I will be making some phone calls to sites like SeedInvest. It would easier to issue tokens without any compliance, but I think that would be foolish. I should endeavor to offer investors another choice which is not an ICO. So that investors have options to choose from given the uncertainty about the future of ICOs.
And if y'all think China isn't becoming extremely important and powerful: