Transfer blockchain capital
Even if Ethereum does nothing else, it has become the platform for financing the startups of the future. No, you can invest in our crowdsale using a combination of bitcoin, ether or fiat money. We can accept wire transfers and things of that nature. I'm not aware of anyone else who has done that. The reason why no one took government money previously was out of concern for being labeled a security.
We're admitting that we're a security. We're the first ICO that's compliant. We're the first ICO of a fund. We're breaking the mold on many fronts. Historically, the ICOs have accepted only bitcoin, or bitcoin and ether. They only took crypto because, mistakenly, a lot of people in the ecosystem think, "Well, if you're only dealing with digital money it's not really regulated. I've been communicating to the ecosystem very actively since People would say, "Bitcoin's not regulated.
They're not bespoke, they're not tailored. They may not be great regulations. They may be regulations you'd prefer to change. But just because you don't think it's regulated doesn't mean it isn't. There are a lot of laws in place that are applicable to the things that we do, and I highly recommend that before you do things you get some good advice from attorneys. Be innovative, be disruptive, go out there and change the world, but do it the right way.
If you're going to take risks, at least understand what they are. Some have suggested that ICOs are something of a legal gray area in the U.
What do you say to that? The regulatory arm is slow to react. Do you know when it reacts? Everyone lost their money. Now people are pissed off and complaining. They're not in a rush. Most of these entrepreneurs have the best of intentions at heart.
They just don't know any better. And, again, that's one of the reasons I'm doing this, because I want to show people the right way to do things. I've been telling most of the people who have approached me in the last three months, "Don't do your ICO until I show you the road map. That's the way the first waves of these things go. People don't know what they're doing. The second mouse gets the cheese.
The first one runs in and— snap. There are only two jurisdictions that have issued guidance on tokenization, and those are Switzerland and Singapore. It doesn't exist in any other jurisdiction in the world. But Switzerland's guidance was only applicable to Ethereum.
And so now all of these other companies have gone and incorporated in Switzerland using guidance that's not applicable to them. It's like they didn't hire lawyers or do their research. Switzerland is great for Ethereum. I think it's an awful jurisdiction for everyone else. Ethereum took a really long time to launch, and that's because they said, "We're going to spend half a million dollars on lawyers to make sure we do it right," which was wise. They said, "We know what we're doing is a big deal.
We know it has enormous potential. So rather than rushing it, let's take our time, let's be thoughtful, let's be methodical and let's do it right. And that's the problem with a lot of these: They're just saying, "Oh, Ethereum did it in Switzerland; let's do it in Switzerland," without doing any actual research. There's no ifs, ands or buts about it: Singapore today is the far better jurisdiction, unless you're the Ethereum Foundation or your structure looks almost identical to Ethereum. It's a huge point, and everybody has done it wrong.
Your token will be available within the U. That's a Regulation S exemption for the rest of the world. Regulation D, for the U. Those are the rules we have to follow under the Regulation D exemption. The international investors can't sell a token to a U. So there's a day lockup on all of the international investors. And the structure is, the ICO is a closed-end fund out of Singapore issuing a token under those two exemptions.
It will be very interesting to see how this all pans out. The next wave of these types of deals are going to be groups that are consumer-facing and have big user bases and want their users to have ownership in their network, and they want that ownership to become a currency within that network. And it's also going to be very relevant to intentional communities. I think those are the next two ICO markets that will emerge in the next year or two. Instead of having the [chief financial officer] send you share certificates, the smart contract is sending you tokens that are representing the security in that company.
Ethereum is still in many ways a prototype. But we have finally figured out what its first killer application is: A big part of the reason why Ethereum's price is where it is, and it's doing as well as it is, is that it has now a killer app. When you did [Ethereum's own] crowdsale, you literally had to keep a ledger, a log, of what everyone's investment was and manually issue them the coins.
Ethereum is now being used frequently and successfully for doing a crowdsale and getting the tokens in the hands of the investors.
Even if Ethereum does nothing else, it has become the platform for financing the startups of the future. No, you can invest in our crowdsale using a combination of bitcoin, ether or fiat money. We can accept wire transfers and things of that nature. I'm not aware of anyone else who has done that. The reason why no one took government money previously was out of concern for being labeled a security.
We're admitting that we're a security. We're the first ICO that's compliant. We're the first ICO of a fund. We're breaking the mold on many fronts. Historically, the ICOs have accepted only bitcoin, or bitcoin and ether. They only took crypto because, mistakenly, a lot of people in the ecosystem think, "Well, if you're only dealing with digital money it's not really regulated.
I've been communicating to the ecosystem very actively since People would say, "Bitcoin's not regulated. They're not bespoke, they're not tailored. They may not be great regulations.
They may be regulations you'd prefer to change. But just because you don't think it's regulated doesn't mean it isn't. There are a lot of laws in place that are applicable to the things that we do, and I highly recommend that before you do things you get some good advice from attorneys. Be innovative, be disruptive, go out there and change the world, but do it the right way.
If you're going to take risks, at least understand what they are. Some have suggested that ICOs are something of a legal gray area in the U. What do you say to that? The regulatory arm is slow to react.
Do you know when it reacts? Everyone lost their money. Now people are pissed off and complaining. They're not in a rush. Most of these entrepreneurs have the best of intentions at heart. They just don't know any better. And, again, that's one of the reasons I'm doing this, because I want to show people the right way to do things.
I've been telling most of the people who have approached me in the last three months, "Don't do your ICO until I show you the road map. That's the way the first waves of these things go. People don't know what they're doing. The second mouse gets the cheese. The first one runs in and— snap.
There are only two jurisdictions that have issued guidance on tokenization, and those are Switzerland and Singapore. It doesn't exist in any other jurisdiction in the world. But Switzerland's guidance was only applicable to Ethereum.
And so now all of these other companies have gone and incorporated in Switzerland using guidance that's not applicable to them. It's like they didn't hire lawyers or do their research. Switzerland is great for Ethereum. I think it's an awful jurisdiction for everyone else. Ethereum took a really long time to launch, and that's because they said, "We're going to spend half a million dollars on lawyers to make sure we do it right," which was wise. They said, "We know what we're doing is a big deal.
We know it has enormous potential. So rather than rushing it, let's take our time, let's be thoughtful, let's be methodical and let's do it right. And that's the problem with a lot of these: They're just saying, "Oh, Ethereum did it in Switzerland; let's do it in Switzerland," without doing any actual research.
There's no ifs, ands or buts about it: Singapore today is the far better jurisdiction, unless you're the Ethereum Foundation or your structure looks almost identical to Ethereum. It's a huge point, and everybody has done it wrong. Your token will be available within the U. That's a Regulation S exemption for the rest of the world. Regulation D, for the U. Those are the rules we have to follow under the Regulation D exemption.
The international investors can't sell a token to a U.