Can I do a crowdfunded equity raise for my company?

Raising money for a common venture is a regulated as a security sale in the United States. Raising money under a SAFT or selling tokens as a proxy for equity may run afoul of the Securities Act.

This was evidenced by the ICO bubble of 2017 which resulted in a net ban on initial coin offerings for illegal fundraising activities.

See also ICO, regulatory arbitrage, pre-mine and security.

References

  1. Kharif, Olga. 2018. ‘Half of ICOs Die Within Four Months After Token Sales Finalized’. Bloomberg.Com. Bloomberg. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-07-09/half-of-icos-die-within-four-months-after-token-sales-finalized.
  2. Livni, Ephrat, and Andrew Ross Sorkin. 2021. ‘The Dramatic Crash of a Buzzy Cryptocurrency Raises Eyebrows’. The New York Times, 28 June 2021, sec. Business. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/28/business/dealbook/icp-cryptocurrency-crash.html.
  3. Andrés, Pablo de, David Arroyo, Ricardo Correia, and Alvaro Rezola. 2022. ‘Challenges of the Market for Initial Coin Offerings’. International Review of Financial Analysis 79: 101966. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.irfa.2021.101966.
  4. Burilov, Vlad. 2019. ‘Regulation of Crypto Tokens and Initial Coin Offerings in the EU: De Lege Lata and de Lege Ferenda’. European Journal of Comparative Law and Governance 6 (2): 146–86. https://doi.org/10.1163/22134514-00602003.
  5. Hofman, Darra, Quinn DuPont, Angela Walch, and Ivan Beschastnikh. 2021. ‘Blockchain Governance: De Facto (x)or Designed?’ In Building Decentralized Trust, 21–33. x. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-54414-0_2.
  6. Walch, Angela. 2019a. ‘In Code (Rs) We Trust: Software Developers as Fiduciaries in Public Blockchains’.
  7. ———. 2019b. ‘Software Developers as Fiduciaries in Public Blockchains’. Regulating Blockchain. Techno-Social and Legal Challenges, Ed. by Philipp Hacker, Ioannis Lianos, Georgios Dimitropoulos & Stefan Eich, Oxford University Press, 2019. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3203198.
  8. Cumming, Douglas J., Sofia Johan, and Anshum Pant. 2019. ‘Regulation of the Crypto-Economy: Managing Risks, Challenges, and Regulatory Uncertainty’. Journal of Risk and Financial Management 12 (3): 126. https://doi.org/10.3390/jrfm12030126.
  9. Davis, Mark and DavisBruce. 2021. Crowdfunding and the Democratization of Finance. Policy Press. https://bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/crowdfunding-and-the-democratization-of-finance.
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