Quote from: buwaytress on October 30, 2017, 12:36:49 PM

Quote from: CryptoSpark on October 25, 2017, 09:56:28 PM

Is it inevitable or even desirable for blockchains and their ICO's to become more regulated or to least run their ICO's in more risk averse ways such as submitting to AML and KYC checks?
Atlas City Finance has just begun its 1 month pre-ICO which is expected to be popular in part due to the large 30% pre-ICO discount but to offset this the ICO is unusual in that it is being run against a set of AML and KYC checks to protect the business, the blockchain and investors. The question remains whether requiring such strict rules to be applied to investors will deter investors or attract more traditional investors who welcome more voluntary regulation.
Smaller investments up to 1 BTC in value dont need KYC or AML checks but larger investments can be used to move money illegally which is why such checking can be helpful. Since Atlas City Finance is really trying to establish market credibility for its other products and services such as Plutous then it makes sense to be over cautious of how the Olympus blockchain is funded. It remains to be seen how ICO investors will react to such checks being carried out and itll certainly be of interest to other upcoming ICOs who are considering how to present their coin offerings.

A presentation that combines Plutous and Olympus is provided in the following link. The ICO is just for the Olympus blockchain and its Olympian coins but this presentation looks at the wider Plutous financial services platform and how it makes use of the features of the Olympus blockchain to provide scale, anonymity and smart contracts in more familiar programming languages.

For full disclosure I'm involved in the blockchain and Atlas business but I find the wider question of whether AML and KYC's protection is good or bad for the blockchain industry as a whole very interesting. Sure it makes sense for a commercial organisation in the financial sector but is it over-restrictive for startup's looking to raise money quickly for without being too intrusive into funding sources? What are your views on these kinds of test or regulations more broadly?

https://www.atlascityfinance.com/media/AtlasCityFinance_BusinessPresentation.pptx

I believe it was inevitable. Crypto as we know it has far outstripped Bitcoin's very basic purpose as a digital P2P trustless currency. Much of the volume we see in crypto markets isn't P2P payments, they belong to exchange trading and other industries. At its height, online gambling took more than 50% of the share, and there's a growing amount of volume attributed to extra-finance industry, never mind venture capitalism through ICOs. The vulnerability to fraud, the shocks of Mt Gox led to knee-jerk reactions but also deep questionings of personal security or security of funds that identification would be necessary for.

As Atlast City sees, it's also a vehicle for credibility - something that crypto enthusiasts can't deny is still one of the biggest struggles of Bitcoin in terms of recognition and acceptance.

At the moment, though, I feel that most projects are only taking steps towards AML/KYC because of regulatory pressure. Reactive rather than progressive. And the motivation behind that is still, as Pursuer mentions, profit without belief in their own project.

Good observations that I agree with. In our defence weve committed to building the OlympusBC blockchain whatever happens with funding since we need it for our main business platform and business plan which is Plutous. Plutous came first and was originally planned to run on Ethereum which would be the easier path for us to follow but because of reasons it became a problem using Ethereum which made OlympusBC necessary for us as a business.
Its perhaps a bit of an unusual situation where we are developing a blockchain to enable us to do our business of Plutous but we believe others will have similar business requirements that makes OlympusBC a useful blockchain in its own right. OlympusBC was first discussed at the end of 2012 and started to take form more over the following years. If we can raise funding to support the development of OlympusBC then that would be far better than trying to develop the blockchain on a tight budget and extended timeline which is what has driven the ICO.

I think there are many reasons for ICOs today, sadly most are just get rich quick schemes with no real business case or purpose. Hundreds of millions of dollars for a tweaked Bitcoin branch or a handful of smart contracts for some personal interest. Among them though are some great business plans and innovative smart contract based businesses or blcokchains. As with the .com boom, the challenge is to spot the unicorns because I have no doubt that well have some major successes akin to PayPal, Amazon and Google.