Why would I want to buy a share of an ICO (initial coin offering)? You don't, but if you find an ICO that is worthy of your captial then in the long run if it amounts to anything, the reward is great! In order to participate in an ICO, once you have finalized your research, and you're committed, it's time to invest. The usual requirement is a minimal range of 0.1 ETH to 1 ETH. (Could be more or less) Ok, I FOUND THE ONE! I picked a neat ICO I wanted to invest in, and I signed up. After you confirm with your email, it has a check box, with, "terms and conditions".
So, I went back and read through the fine print. The main important points were as follows: this ICO will not issue refunds. Furthermore, you can ONLY buy an ICO where you RESIDE. I live in USA. The ICO I was looking at was Europe based. Okay, well that blows. Another amazing one I wanted invest in was from Asia. That's incredibly disheartening.
United States Government views ICOs as securities. ICOs from USA has to be approved by the SEC (Security Exchange Commission) which is hard because you need tons of funds. I checked several ICOs based in USA and at the bottom of their whitepaper in the CAPS-LOCK, seizure-inducing legal statement, they specify their token is not a security. This basically means they did not need SEC to approve their ICO because it's not a currency, but used as another platform. I can't imagine the type of collateral you would need to hold as a startup company to run an ICO that SEC would approve. Mainly multi-million dollar corporations or absurdly wealthy people, etc. To put briefly, Americans are excluded from anything overseas, and vice versa with people that reside overseas. Simply because that is the rule.
SOURCE: Harvard Law School on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation
Americans are ineligible for any ICO outside of the United States! This article was intended for people who has never bought an ICO before or first time buyers of an ICO. Always read the fine print or else you'll lose your investment, you have been warned!
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