Australia is fighting illegal ICO projects

Australian financial supervision, ASIC, started a war with companies responsible for unfair projects offering so-called ICO (Initial Coin Offering) - community financing of startups by collecting capital with the help of newly created cryptocurrencies and tokens.

ICO = cheating?

With the popularization of cryptocurrencies, the ICO problem began to increase very quickly. Australian regulator draws attention to a few extremely frequent phenomena with which we can meet, including:

• misleading customers through false statements and marketing materials,
• illegal operation of the investment program (without the required registration - MIS),
• no Australian license for financial services.

John Price, ASIC Commissioner:

“If you are collecting money from the public, you have important legal obligations. What matters is the legal substance of your offer, not what is called it. You should not just assume that using an ICO framework allows you to ignore key safeguards for the investing public, and you should always ensure that disclosure of your bid information is complete and accurate. "

Words have not been thrown to the wind. As of April this year ASIC has already intervened in relation to 5 ICO offers. Some have only received a yellow card and have to adapt to the requirements, but there have also been cases of total suspension.

In order to raise public awareness of investing in highly risky ICOs, Australian supervision has set up a special site explaining what virtual vending tokens are and what risks they entail. Details are available on the website MoneySmart.gov.au.