Altcoin News: SEC: Platforms for IEO May Violate US Law

May 14, 2019, by Marko Vidrih on ALTCOIN MAGAZINE

Crypto exchanges running initial exchange offering (IEO) campaigns on their platforms could violate US securities laws, Valerie Szczepanik, the SEC’s senior advisor for digital assets and innovation said on Monday at a conference at Consensus 2019.

According to her, cryptocurrency exchanges that sell tokens for a certain fee probably meet the definition of a securities dealer if the issuer or one of the buyers is in the United States.

Accordingly, they must comply with registration and licensing requirements for broker-dealer companies, alternative trading systems or national securities exchanges. Otherwise, problems may await them, she added.

“If they are not registered they will find themselves in trouble in the US, if they have a U.S. issuer or U.S. buyers, if they are operating on the U.S. market,” she said.

Have any exchanges in the field of view of the regulator in connection with the violation of these requirements to the present moment, Szczepanik did not specify. However, she mentioned the TokenLot platform case, which was promoted as an “ICO supermarket” and “proved to be revealing in this context”.

“There was a platform that was assisting to bring buyers to ICOs,” she said. “In this case, there was an enforcement action, as the platform was acting as a broker-dealer and participating in the distribution with a violation of the registration provisions.”

Author: Marko Vidrih