In an announcement made yesterday, SEC decided that all assets sold through ICOs are securities. Hence, they have to be regulated. In other words, the blockchain just got in the hands of the State.
The implications are huge. Oh, scratch that. The implications are historical (a look at the markets should confirm that).
Just last week I was writing that we are in the Wild Wild West era of the cryptocurrencies. Seems like that era just ended.
As in every other event in our life, there are many faces to it, nothing is completely good, or completely bad. This ruling too has a few interesting corners. So, as they say, let's see the good, the bad and the ugly.
The Good
It will be more difficult to scam genuine people interested in cryptos. The abundance of ICOs of the last few months brought to the shore a few very questionable ones. The fact that every emission of tokens in an ICO is now regulated will probably blast away more than half of those and will slow down the number of potential ones significantly.
The Bad
Since the number of ICOs will decrease, the dynamic of the market will go down significantly. In startup terms, "time to market" will become an order of magnitude longer. That will also slow down innovation and, overall, will make the entire ecosystem a bit duller. After an initial period of clarification, we will probably see this in the trading variations too: 10-20% day to day will be thing of the past.
The Ugly
What once was a distinctive sign of freedom, a longing for a better, decentralized world, without the ever pressuring presence of the almighty state, is now a thing of the past. The weirdos, the misfits, the crazy ones of the blockchain are gone. I used to say many times that Bitcoin, as a business, will be very similar to Napster. Do you still remember Napster? It was the first torrent service ever and it went down in flames. There was even this saying on the Internet: "go Napster: destroy to create!". Well, Napster certainly destroyed itself but the technology remained. I'm afraid we will see this with Bitcoin as well. It may be the price to be paid in order to have not one predominant currency, but a plethora of decentralized, ledger-based ecosystems, just like, today, torrents are an ubiquitous, silent presence.
Time will tell.
I'm a serial entrepreneur, blogger and ultrarunner. You can find me mainly on my blog at Dragos Roua where I write about productivity, business, relationships and running. Here on Steemit you may stay updated by following me @dragosroua.
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