SEC Acts On Cryptocurrencies And ICOs

In the past few years, and particularly in the past few months, cryptocurrencies or digital currencies – most notably bitcoin and ether – have surged in popularity and dominated the financial press and to some degree even the mainstream media. The value of the most famous cryptocurrency, bitcoin, has reached historically high levels.

Given the increasing demand for cryptocurrencies, it is no surprise that market participants are responding and racing to satisfy that demand by producing more such currencies or so-called tokens representing the currencies. Additional currencies, or to be precise the tokens representing interests in such currencies, are produced and disseminated by a process colloquially known as an "initial coin offering" or "ICO," not coincidentally a term which is similar to the better-known term "IPO." As with all new technologies, regulators have been slow to catch up, but they now appear to have done so.