ICO

The national authorities have developed a new vision regarding initial coin offerings (ICOs). The investigation process into Korean crowdfunding platforms took nearly 3 months to form a thorough understanding of the fintech market in the country. As a result, it turned out that many companies have bypassed the ICO ban by moving business overseas.

The government of Malaysia will regulate initial coin offerings (ICOs) and cryptoasset trading, according to what the minister of finance said on January 14.

ICOs, or initial coin offerings, have been around for a few years now. However, it was only the last year when they stepped out of shadows and magnetized the attention of mainstream media, regulators, and, most of all, wannabe investors. The examples of astonishingly successful campaigns that managed to raise millions in a few minutes inspired lots of other ‘disruptors’ to run a campaign of their own.

Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) were victims of their own success. As cryptocurrencies took the world by storm, and innovative startups raised hundreds of millions of dollars via ICOs, scammers and con artists took notice, and abused the model. The market quickly became oversaturated with nonsensical and downright fraudulent blockchain solutions that damaged the public’s trust in the model and choked out quality projects.

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) Securities & Commodities Authority (SCA), a regulatory body, has officially approved Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) tokens as securities and a full framework is expected to be revealed in mid-2019, Arabian Business and TheNational.ae, a local news outlet, reported.

The Thailand (Thai) Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC) is purportedly considering whether to smoothen the country’s regulation for ICOs. The regulator is carrying out a public hearing to calm down rules on pre-sales and private crypto sales. The SEC has also uncovered plans to stop the usage of crypto sales.

A new bill regulating investments in initial coin offering (ICO) projects will take force soon. Government officials have released a draft law stating that average Russians will be allowed to invest in ICO no more than $9,000 per year.

Thailand and ASEAN countries get rid of ICOs to support STOs, which they call a next-gen IPO, because of its decentralised and democratic nature and ability to be legally regulated by the government to protect investors from fraud and make the market transparent and legal. That’s the main idea of the ASEAN Digital Assets Summit 2018, which was held on December 9 in Bangkok, Thailand.

Sberbank and Russia’s National Settlement Depository (NSD) have partnered to conduct a test on initial coin offerings (ICO) within the regulatory sandbox. As a result, they expressed an intention to find a way for token sales implementation and other services related to the fintech.