We taught Congress about ICOs.

The Congressional Blockchain Caucus held a briefing on token sales on Capitol Hill today. Coin Center, along with experts from the cryptocurrency industry, taught policymakers and their staff about how the law can approach this exciting method for crowdfunding distributed public networks in a way that sensibly protects consumers while preserving an innovation-friendly environment in the U.S.

Peter Van Valkenburgh laid out our thinking on a sensible approach to tokens for securities regulators. In short: lots of tokens are probably securities but there are is a small subset, those that are useful for purchasing distributed network goods and services, which are not. He was joined by Joel Monegro of Placeholder Capital, Ken Nguyen of CoinList, and Erik Kintner of Snell and Wilmer. Congressman Jared Polis, co-chair of the Congressional Blockchain Caucus, gave remarks after the panel highlighting the importance of government approaching this technology smartly to preserve innovation in this space.

Also, yesterday our executive director Jerry Brito was on stage during the Blockchain@State event held by the State Department. He was there to explain what blockchains are, what they can do, and perhaps most importantly, what they can’t do. Watch the event here (Jerry’s portion begins at around 50 minutes in).