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Make a note on your calendars – January 2018 was when everything changed. The free world of cryptocurrency ran headlong into an intractable wall of US regulators.

Not that there was no hint of regulatory action in the air. The Securities and Exchange Commission had already closed two initial coin offerings in December and deployed a cyber unit with ICOs under its responsibility, but the regulators dropped their mark and fired the assault last month.

A Wall Street Journal editorial by SEC President Jay Clayton and Commodity Futures Trading Commission President J. Christopher Giancarlo informed the industry and this was not the case. was the beginning

another OIC, the third in the last two months. Separate reports revealed that the CFTC had issued assignments to one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges in the world, created an intensive review process for virtual currencies and charged cryptocurrency for having scammed investors $ 6 million

. in response to the op-ed, or perhaps the half-billion dollar digital coin theft of a Japanese exchange, Facebook announced that it would ban all advertisements promoting cryptocurrency.

On Tuesday, February 6, Housing, Urban Affairs held an audience exclusively devoted to virtual currencies with Clayton and Giancarlo as the only witnesses.

"The message goes that it's not out of the grid," Giancarlo told the committee. "Now you see it in Bitcoin prices as we come out of the misconduct."

For an industry that has experienced explosive growth, but largely avoided regulation, these changes

The industry has exceeded $ 700 billion in January, and an analyst has projected a longer-term potential of $ 10 billion. As the editorial has pointed out, "the SEC will vigorously pursue those seeking to evade the registration, disclosure and enforcement requirements of our securities laws." And all participants in the industry are closely monitored, including "brokers, investment advisers, and trading platforms."

These warnings provide a windfall for the legal community that has already touched the cryptocurrency industry. Several large companies have practices focused on Blockchain and digital parts, but others will follow soon, and practices will only grow and become more sophisticated.

In this new era, small cryptocurrency players due diligence, will likely bend or never come to the market in the first place. And the main players will seek to secure their position and reach a wider audience, retaining the necessary legal firepower to gain the regulators' blessing.

Cryptocurrency providers must now be able to go further by telling their stories and reach a broader investor base. This involves engaging the media to succinctly explain how their products work, what their value is and what legal diligence supports them. In doing so, they can tout their compliance process and ongoing monitoring, and even quote the senior law firm that does the work.

In the end, the cryptocurrency industry has labels hard to overcome, such as "scam" and "fraud", not to mention the recent statements of regulators

Last year was marked by unprecedented growth for the industry, but 2018 will mark the beginning of a new era of due diligence and transparency. At the beginning of the year, the SEC and the CFTC essentially forced the hand of digital parts companies

Clayton and Giancarlo noted in their editorial: "Market participants, including lawyers, trading platforms and financial services Businesses should be aware that we are disturbed by many examples of elevated forms, with arguments based on forms that deprive investors of mandatory protections.

Cryptocurrency companies must now act or risk becoming the next victim.

The opinions expressed herein are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Cointelegraph.com.

Matthew Beaton