France’s Financial Regulators Working on Flexible and Secure ICOs

The stock market regulatory authority of France, Autorite des Marches Financiers (AMF) has recently announced that it working on creating a new regulatory framework for ICOs with some flexible set of guidelines thereby by ensuring that the security is not compromised at any time.

The great thing is that the French government is itself promoting this idea and working in collaboration with AMF to help local companies raise capital by the means of Initial Coin Offering (ICO). ICO is basically a decentralized way of fundraising used by many startups and businesses. The company who is raising funds through an ICO will give investors its own digital tokens in exchange for Bitcoin, Ethereum or any other digital of fiat currency.

The proposal for the ICO holds a very liberal stand with an optional and non-obligatory authorization scheme that allows companies to receive a Visa, in order to launch an ICO. A company receiving a Visa means that the AMF has given a go-ahead by approving the credibility of its operations thereby providing investors a greater sense of security and comfort.

For those not receiving the Visa still will be allowed to launch the ICO, just that it will be without the official credibility and accreditation from the French government and regulatory bodies. However, details of the ICO optional authorization scheme are skew in terms of how and to what degree the government aims to regulate the process in order to address frauds and scams which have been increasingly prevalent in the ICO market over the last one year.

With such set of lenient and flexible conditions for companies and investors, France could be the next epicenter of the globe for ICOs.

However, in the recent past, the AMF has blacklisted 15 cryptocurrency investment websites, that speaks of their commitment to providing the right security to investors. All the ICOs taking place in France will surely go through the AMF’s regulatory check and will be thoroughly assessed with proper conduct and operational legitimacy.

In the recent times, government bodies like South Korean and China from around the globe have denounced the concept of ICO calling them to be potential tools of money laundering and fraud. Last year in September 2017, the two countries introduced a blanket ban on ICO operations which has been followed later by many other countries as well.

However, in a twist of tales, a report arriving earlier this week stated that South Korea is again reconsidering its stand and can lift the ban under the new set of regulatory rules.