How Useful Is the SEC's Guidance on ICOs? - Ep.067

Marco Santori, the president and chief legal officer of Blockchain, discusses this week's big regulatory news — the SEC's guidance on initial coin offerings and its first no-action letter. We talk about what guidance actually means and how much weight it has in court, how much clarity this guidance actually brought, and how the framework could affect also future attempts at future fundraising/token distribution events and airdrops. We also cover the no-action letter and the ways in which the token of TurnKey Jet, which received the no-action letter, is quite different from most other crypto-tokens and how helpful that example is for crypto projects. Thank you to our sponsor! CipherTrace: http://ciphertrace.com/unconfirmed Episode links: SEC guidance: https://www.sec.gov/files/dlt-framework.pdf No-action letter: https://www.sec.gov/divisions/corpfin/cf-noaction/2019/turnkey-jet-040219-2a1.htm Marco Santori: https://twitter.com/msantoriesq Marco's tweet storm on the guidance and no-action letter: https://twitter.com/msantoriESQ/status/1113458502264074246 Coin Center's analysis: https://coincenter.org/entry/coin-center-analysis-of-sec-cryptocurrency-guidance Jake Chervinksy tweetstorm: https://twitter.com/jchervinsky/status/1113672285595086848 Skeptic Preston Byrne tweetstorm: https://twitter.com/prestonjbyrne/status/1113463999591518209 Meltem Demirors tweetstorm: https://twitter.com/melt_dem/status/1113457795792293889 Katherine Wu tweetstorm: https://twitter.com/katherineykwu/status/1113452950041649157 Gabriel Shapiro tweetstorm: https://twitter.com/lex_node/status/1113461396593713152 SAFT white paper: http://saftproject.com/#saft-whitepaper Article on SAFT white paper: https://www.forbes.com/sites/laurashin/2017/10/02/are-icos-for-utility-tokens-selling-securities-prominent-crypto-players-say-yes/ More on the no-action letter: https://www.coindesk.com/sec-issues-first-ever-no-action-letter-clearing-ico-to-sell-tokens-under-us-law https://www.coindesk.com/secs-first-crypto-no-action-letter-took-11-months-to-secure Letter from TurnKey Jet prompting the no-action letter: https://www.sec.gov/divisions/corpfin/cf-noaction/2019/turnkey-jet-040219-2a1-incoming.pdf Unchained episode with SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce: https://unchainedpodcast.com/sec-commissioner-hester-peirce-come-talk-to-the-sec/