The age of regulated crypto fundraising

2017 was the Wild West of ICO that amazed investors with their simplicity and accessibility. Unsurprisingly, it was also the period of magnificent scams, for the sector was completely unregulated and the aspiring investors – too naive. The scammers didn’t do a service to crypto adoption then, but eventually this negative image has somewhat faded, and the industry resumed its development.

Nowadays STO (Security Token Offerings, a sub-category of ICO) are more subtle and – above all – regulated, the first SEC approval for an STO obtained in 2019 by the blockchain company Stacks.

There’s another way to do it too: a popular non-custodial wallet Exodus has raised $60M since April by selling their stocks against Bitcoin, Ethereum and USDC stablecoins. The shares from this SEC-approved sale will be tokenized on Algorand blockchain, where they can be claimed by shareholders using Exodus wallet. Exodus is one of the few companies turning real shares into tokens, allowing its sharehoders to enjoy the simplicity of transfer provided by the blockchain.