Legal Research On The Regulation Of Initial Coin Offerings(ICO) In China

Initial Coin Offerings(ICO),a new financing method relying on blockchain technology,has attracted widespread attention in China with the popularity of the blockchain concept since 2016.However,the investment projects are mixed,and many project sponsors bring funds.Absconding,investors often lose their money.The brutal growth of ICO has attracted the attention of regulators.With the release of the9.4 announcement,the ICO chaos in China’s financial market has been rectified and curbed to a certain extent.However,this one-size-fits-all regulatory policy also has certain limitations.At the same time,in sharp contrast to China,other countries such as the United States,the United Kingdom,and Singapore have adopted an open and inclusive attitude to financial innovations such as ICO.They are actively exploring the compliance path and regulatory policies of ICO,and have achieved some accomplishments.Therefore,how to make this kind of financial innovation serve the real economy under the dual background of international and domestic,so that ICO can develop according to laws and regulations and implement effective supervision on it is the content that this article will focus on.This article intends to discuss the ICO compliance roads and regulatory paths from the risks and regulatory dilemmas faced by China’s ICO at the current stage,and guide the ICO to the road of legal and regulatory development under the premise of ensuring financial security.This article discusses the legal research on ICO supervision in China from four parts.The first part is overview of ICO.First,the basic concepts of ICO are discussed,and the origin and process of ICO are introduced.Then,referring to the regulatory guidelines issued by the United Kingdom,Switzerland,and Singapore,the ICO are divided into three categories and their legal nature is examined and analyzed.Then from the limitations of the domestic "one size fits all" policy,the trend of actively embracing ICO internationally,and the unique advantages of ICO compared to traditional financing methods,it is stated that when the time is ripe,restrictions on ICO should be released,thereby laying the foundation for subsequent discussions.The second part is the risks and regulatory dilemmas of ICO.Based on the contents of the 9.4 announcement,this paper explores the legal risks of the ICOfinancing model in China,and focuses on the difficulties faced by the ICO supervision in China and the reasons behind them.This paper mainly discusses and analyzes the problems from three aspects: suspected illegal fundraising and illegal securities issuance at the time of issuing,money laundering crimes during transactions and investor protection.The third part is the practice of foreign ICO supervision,taking the United States as an example.On the basis of arranging the ICO supervision models of nine foreign countries at the current stage,in view of the regulatory dilemma mentioned above,the United States is used as an example to explain the US ICO financing model and provide a model reference for the feasibility development and effective supervision of ICO in China.The fourth part is the path selection of ICO supervision.This part is the manifestation of the main research results of this article,and basically echoes the questions raised in Chapter Two,and puts forward five suggestions on how to establish an ICO regulatory path in line with China’s actual situation.The first is to amend the securities law,expand the concept of securities,create a small issuance exemption system,and include ICO in the scope of securities regulation and create convenience for them;the second is to clarify the regulatory body and establish a comprehensive regulatory regulatory structure;the third is to strictly disclose information to ensure The information is concise and easy to understand;the fourth is to strengthen the management of trading platforms,strengthen investor threshold requirements and risk education;the fifth is to implement fund custody to reduce the risk of absconding with funds;the sixth is to pilot sandbox supervision to accumulate experience for the implementation of the ICO supervision model;It is to strengthen international cooperation to jointly combat illegal ICO and money laundering crimes.