Can Genesis Vision Be The Catalyzing Solution to ICO Regulation Amid Jamie Dimon’s Public Deception, China Ban & SEC Charges? CrowdConscious Follow Oct 3, 2017 · 8 min read

Initial Coin Offerings have been a major source of capital for innovative projects across the world as they are a low-cost/low-barrier, innovative methods to raise funds. On September 29th the U.S. SEC filed fraud charges against the operator of two ICO’s, just weeks after the “Great China Ban,” South Korea followed suit days ago. Those of us in the industry are watching closely and eagerly seeking solutions to stifle the already volatile state of the market — growth becomes extremely difficult during periods of instability. Despite the volatility and lack of solutions, the cryptocurrency markets continue to maintain stability after the shakeup.

Government regulators have good reason to be concerned as we have been hearing about the abundance of scams going on in the cryptocurrency community. From Slack Channel phishing to ICOs being hacked or landing pages being duplicated with an alternative scam address. With all the talks about the banning and regulation of Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs), I thought I would create an article about:

some of the statistics and history of ICOs ;

and ; why the regulation of ICOs is necessary , but needs to be done properly & delicately ; and

the , but & ; and why Genesis Vision project has the potential to create the required bridge to fill a similar gap that JPMorgan is after.

Little Bit of ICO History

First off, the term ‘Initial Coin Offering’ is synonymous with Token Sale, Crowdsale, Initial Token Offering or Token Generation Event. They’re all different ways to issue a blockchain coin or token to potential community members interested in backing the project. Bitcoin’s initial disbursement is not be considered an ICO because it was airdropped to users who downloaded to Proof-of-Work program, supporting the network operations.

The first noted ICO was the Mastercoin project (OMNI) which had officially launched on July 31, 2013, years after the White Paper was published. The fundraiser lasted 1-month and funds were to build digital tokens that the Bitcoin protocol uses to conduct transactions. [1] The Founder, J.R. Willett, gave off the idea that the tokens would become more valuable as the platform was being developed, realizing a return on their initial contribution to the project.[2] Despite the many red flags and claims of being a scam, a total of 5,000 BTC was raised from around 500 contributors (about $500k at the time).[3][4]

Let’s get to some statistics to better understand why ICOs are such a controversial topic across the globe. To the left, I have created a comparison you WILL NOT see anywhere else. Why? Because very few people even know about the U.S. Equity Crowdfunding regulations passed in May 2016 after 3 1/2 years. The Jump-start Our Business Startups (JOBS) Act, birthed “Regulation Crowdfunding,” an SEC regulation allowing any startup to file with the SEC to raise up to $1.07 million from anybody in the United States. The creation of these rules was intended to spur innovation, create jobs, and allowed ALL American citizens to finally access high-risk, potentially high-return investment opportunities.

Unfortunately, the cost-of-compliance is simply too high for a startup to afford, a characteristic instantly noticeable in the visual above — ICOs in 9-months of 2017 have outperformed U.S. startups by nearly 50x in capital raised AND more companies raised those funds…does it look like heavy regulation is the answer to spurring innovation? I would say, no.

Now, this is a hyper-growth scenario, easier to compare regulated and unregulated capital markets when taking into account there are few markets as volatile as the cryptocurrency markets and few new markets as regulated as equity crowdfunding — both around similar age, intended to have very similar outcomes — innovative solutions. The quickly sinking powerhouse that the U.S. is compared with the most hungry, zealous global entrepreneurs. I’ll let you look further into why regulation hurts innovation yourself, but I think we can all agree that costly regulations hurt the ability for companies to afford innovating . Every decision relies on costs and revenue, not the solution to the core problem being solved. I recommend taking a look at the report from the picture above.

Why Do We Need Regulation?

Join ANY ICO Slack Channel — the amount of people falling for Slack-bot phishing scams AFTER the ICO is almost scary, millions. Technology has progressed in a way that has left humanity on a spectrum of tech savvy-ness, leaving those on the caveman-side of the spectrum most vulnerable. Pooling our resources together as a specifies in order to protect our long-term survival is important in 2017 — those who were scammed have no regulatory agency to rely on to hold the market accountable.

Aside from the aforementioned scams, governments can benefit greatly by harnessing the benefits created by the blockchain technology. I also, personally believe that large institutions have simply gone rampant with power. For example, JPMorgan Chase Bank has their own privatized blockchain technology. Yet, their CEO, Jamie Dimon, came out to the public a few weeks ago saying “Bitcoin was a fraud” and that it “will be shut down.” So, how is Bitcoin any more a fraud than, say, Ethereum? (Bloomberg, CBSNews, CNN Money)

Trust me, you’ll appreciate this research. See why the blockchain community does not like institutions? Yup, you’re seeing that right. JPMorgan has their own version of Ethereum to offer to clients — “Smart Contract Platform.” Or…privatized blockchain network? I’m not sure I can believe my eyes…but wait, THERE’S MORE!