Attorney Seibert claims Ethereum token pre-sale is an obvious sale of an unlicensed unregistered security
My opinion on this topic
I don't actually agree with the interpretation of Ethereum as being a company or business, or believe that Ethers are securities. At the same time I'm not a lawyer. I present this legal perspective because many others have posted in favor of the ICO model and claimed that there are little to no risks involved. The fact is that this is not very clear as to what the legal status of is or how regulators will treat it. In fact, if we assume regulators will treat it as securities then perhaps we can take a more active approach toward resolving these issues by either pushing to exempt ICOs from this regulation or by self regulating it using technical means and norms.
If we find regulators are likely to bring additional risks then it becomes possible to push to relax regulation in this space. Now I do agree with Jason's point that some of the marketing of Ethereum probably was not honest. Unstoppable contracts? Code is law? The DAO showed otherwise and that promise was really stupid in my opinion to put as official marketing. Calling it an investment also isn't very wise in my opinion.