Gary Gensler, former chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission in the US, recently had this to say about ICOs at the MIT Technology Business Review of Blockchain:

“Many initial coin offerings, probably well over a thousand, many crypto exchanges, probably 100 to 200, are basically operating outside of US law“

This could be dangerous.

It is well-known that the US is not only the World’s largest, most dominant economy, but more importantly, it is also the home of the New York Stock Exchange: the World’s most important trading platform.

The US matters to cryptocurrency. It is the World’s second-largest market, behind Japan and in front of South Korea. Should ICOs be too vigorously regulated in the USA then it could send shockwaves across the entire market.

It is hard to argue that ICOs do require regulating at some point in the future: they are undoubtedly a risky venture and, whilst the greatest offer amazing returns on investment (ROI), many of them fail into obscurity, taking their investor’s Ethereum, Bitcoin, fiat and other altcoins with them.

Regardless, without ICOs the new projects and technological developments within the crypto space quite simply would, in the large majority of cases, simply not be able to raise enough funding for them to be realised.

This is crucial. Should the US deem ICOs to be enemies of the people we could see a seismic shift, not only in the US market, but the ripples would be felt across the globe, as fledgling projects falter and many are never even considered.

We do need ICOs, but arguably they do need to be regulated.

Will it be done reasonably? Let’s wait and see.