By now, most of you will have heard that the WSJ has broken the exclusive on the fact that the SEC has subpoenaed 'scores' of ICOs. My sources tell me that there are over 75 to have been subpoenaed and that these are not just the little obvious scam ones but some pretty big whale tokens as well.
Of course, we also warned you here on the pages of Steemit that the word was already on the street that these subpoenas were coming and that the lawyers 'advising' these ICOs would also be in the cross hairs. We had heard from some prominent lawyers down at Satoshi Roundtable that the first wave of subpoenas would target those tokens which were offering pre-sales. Many seem to have not realised that each pre-sale represented another offering to the main offering that was the ICOs public launch - thus they had not just one securities offering, but two or three or four, depending on the number of discounted pre-sale rounds they did.
Jay Clayton, chairman of the SEC appointed by Trump, was quite clear for the past few months that these subpoenas would be coming. His beat is Wall Street and unlike the CFTC chairman, he's less inclined to be favorable to a financing model which displaces Wall St banks.
The question now, is what impact will this have?
It's worth watching our interview with top cryptocurrency lawyer, Marco Santori. We interviewed him in January in Miami and the word on the street (which I have not confirmed at all) was that his firm had been contacted by the SEC for information about ICO clients. He's since left the firm to join Blockchain.info, but in light of ongoing SEC issues, it's interesting to re-watch this discussion about ICOs (from 12.30):
