Crowdfunding service and Kickstarter-competitor Indiegogo is now offering an ICO service alongside its partner, MicroVentures. The company will allow users to participate in SEC-complaint ICOs and, like its slow-burning equity crowdfunding service, will pick and choose startups that match certain exacting criteria.
These tokens sales will be SEC complaint and the sales are performed within current SEC regulations. Their first client, a fan-controlled football league, is in pre-sales now.
“Our ICO service is designed to allow the maximum number of investors to participate in ICO token pre-sales and sales,” said Slava Rubin, Indiegogo Founder and Chief Business Officer. “We believe cryptocurrency and blockchain technologies constitute an important step towards democratizing finance and introducing new levels of utility and liquidity to fundraising instruments. We want to make ICOs accessible to everyone, not just accredited investors.”
Companies can apply to sell their token on a new website and will receive guidance from MicroVentures to keep them on the right side of SEC guidance.
Rubin said that Indiegogo was well-placed to run ICOs thanks to their global reach and compliance skills.
“We have 10 million monthly users and reach people in 232 countries and territories. We can amplify token sales to a broad community of accredited and non accredited investors,” he said. “When we launched equity crowdfunding in 2016, we partnered with a FINRA registered broker dealer called Microventures. This partnership allows us to navigate the various securities and other relevant laws and maintain a strict level of compliance for token sales. Token sellers value this because the laws governing token sales are still evolving and we’re able to conduct sales and pre-sales in compliance with the relevant laws.”
Don’t expect to hop on, press a button, and immediately fund your potato salad token, however.
“Due to curation, they can be sure their token sales will be in good company,” he said.