US regulators require that digital shares of shares be traded in accordance with the same legislation as common shares. To this opinion they came, investigating the activities of a company that sold virtual papers for crypto currency and was robbed by hackers.

SEC solution.

The Securities and Exchange Commission of the United States (SEC) intends to bring under the US securities legislation operations such as the original offering of coins (ICO) and the sale of tokens. To the ICO business resorts to attract investment through crypto-currencies, and tokens are a virtual analogue of shares.

It does not matter whether the participants in the transaction are traditional or "virtual" organizations, whether the purchase of securities for dollars or bitcoins, and how the transaction is fixed - as usual or through a block of flats - this will be considered a transaction with securities that should be legally executed. The SEC explains its actions with concern for the safety of market players during the use of innovative ways of raising capital.

DAO Investigation.

SEC officially warned the market about innovations in the investigation report on the case of the Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO), which posted on its website. The investigation revealed that the DAO was selling tokens for the EtherCript currency, without registering these transactions as transactions with securities. At the same time, the company positioned itself as a crowd-drawing project, but this legislation did not match either - it did not have a dealer or a portal to raise funds registered by regulators.

SEC drew attention to the activities of DAO after the company's network was hacked by hackers in June 2016.

At that time, DAO had at its disposal the funds raised by it for the amount of about 7.9 million Ether coins, that is, a total value of more than $ 132 million. The funds were raised from the sale of tokens and were to go for venture capital investments. Hackers managed to steal some of the coins, which caused the collapse of the Ether.

The SEC does not raise charges against the DAO, but warns that tokens are securities, so both they and the exchanges where they are traded must comply with US federal securities laws.