Introduction
So you are a tech startup who want to raise funds. You figure that instead of incurring debt, issuing equity, entering into convertible loan agreements (CLA), you will conduct an initial coin offering (ICO) or digital token sale. Not least because the amounts of money which have been raised by recent ICOs are huge. (I am using ICO because it is a shorter well-recognised abbreviation than “digital token sale”, even though the term ICO may be a bit of a misnomer.)
For every ICO that makes headlines, there are probably many ICOs which fall far below the issuers’ expectations. A lot of this of course is based on investors/purchasers’ sentiment and speculation. But some of that is also dependent on a few things like good marketing, viable underlying business model or technology, a credible team, and fair and reasonable terms of sale. If you do wish to build credibility for your ICO, there are some things which you would want to consider from a legal, regulatory perspective.