South Korea, after China, forbade Icons. Initial coin offerings have been banned today by the Financial Services Commission, Seoul's financial sector supervisory agency, who added that cryptovalue trading must be severely regulated. "Collecting funds through the Ico seems to be a growing phenomenon globally, and our position is that Ico are also growing in South Korea," said the Seoul Finance Committee, which promises "strong fines" against financial institutions and other parties involved in cryptovalue offerings.
Ico has proven to be a very popular start-up financing method. This year, crowdfunding surpassed the two billion dollars, but the Ico also opened up a number of doubts between regulators for the unregulated nature of these operations and the danger that they could cover financial crimes. These two factors have convinced Beijing's financial authorities and China's central bank, Peoplès Bank of China, to ban it in early September.
In addition to China and South Korea, ICOs have also raised doubts with other financial regulators in other countries. The US Sec Securities Exchange Commission is setting up a "cyber unit" to examine suspicious Ico, while the Monetary Authority of Singapore (Monetary Authority of Singapore) is considering whether to ban Icons or not. Even from Australia, the financial authorities have launched the alarm: the Securities and Investments Commission has issued new Ico rules, warning savers of the potential risks inherent in these operations.
Actually, for Christine Lagarde, the general manager of the International Monetary Fund, virtual currencies such as Bitcoin do not threaten the existence of traditional coins but "is not wise" ignore evolution. The former French Finance Minister has also provided some of the reasons why cryptovalues will not replace traditional currencies: "They are too volatile, too risky and require too much energy, many are too opaque for regulators, and some have been hacking attacks, explained during the London Bank of England conference entitled "Central Banking and Fintech-A Brave New World?".
However, many of these cited technology criticalities will be overcome as happened with PCs and tablets: "Not long ago, some experts argued that personal computers would never have been adopted and that the tablets would only be used as expensive trays for the coffee, "he added. In this context, the number one of the IMF invited them to think of countries with unstable currencies and weak institutions. "Instead of adopting the currency of another nation, such as the US dollar, some of these economies might see an increasing use of virtual currencies." For Christine Lagarde it would be a sort of "dollarization 2.0".
In practice, a day will come when citizens can hold virtual currencies instead of dollars, euros and pounds simply because "it might be easier and safer to get banknotes, especially in remote regions. And why virtual currencies could become more stable ". Lagarde seems to be, then, deployed by Morgan Stanley's chief executive, not JP Morgan's boss. According to the first, James Gorman, Bitcoin "is certainly more than a passing fashion. The anonymous currency concept is interesting." For the second, Jamie Dimon, digital currency is a "fraud" that will make a "nasty end".
This is very good news if you think about this from other side. As from now there will be less scammers and less ICO's that are trying to just get people's money. I think that this ICO banning will be also done by other bigger country's but you never know, it's just my thoughts :)