Turkey’s Finance Minister, Berat Albayrak, has launched a New Economics Program for 2019-2021 which mentions Initial Coin Offerings (ICO). Under the heading of Policies and Measures, it says according to a rough translation:
“Funding innovative projects by promoting digital transformation for Crowdfunding and IPO.
Modern and new generation such as ICO (Initial Coin Offering) financing methods will be expanded.”
What that means exactly is unclear, with ICOs mentioned no further as the economic plan goes on to provide a high level view of other planned policies.
The report does not mention blockchain or crypto, but only ICOs, suggesting Turkey may be seeing them as a viable method of fundraising for entrepreneurs, with measures to encourage ICOs potentially to be announced in due course.
In America, lawmakers and the high level government more generally has said little regarding ICOs, cryptos, or blockchain tech, but Congressman Warren Davidson is hosting a roundtable today with 50 representatives from the crypto industry.
That includes Coinbase, Circle, Andreessen Horowitz, Nasdaq, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and others who are to attend. As well as Reps. Ted Budd, R-N.C., Tom Emmer, R-Minn., French Hill, R-Ark., and Darren Soto, D-Fla, among others.
“Your input is critical to helping us preempt a heavy-handed regulatory approach that could stall innovation and kill the U.S. ICO market,” Davidson said in a letter to invitees according to CNBC.
This is the biggest meeting ever between the crypto industry and lawmakers, with the latter generally happy to leave matters to specialized non elected agencies, like the Securities and Exchanges Commission (SEC).
SEC however has come under considerable criticism from this space and more widely for failing to adapt to a digital age, with century old laws, when horse carriages were the latest innovation, still being the primary laws regulating trillion dollars worth of the digital economy.
Yet SEC can not change such laws as they only enforce them, in theory in any event. Only Congress can update the laws, with Congress now seemingly at least thinking about it.
Generally it appears that the issues which concern this space are bipartisan, with the left and right probably able to find common ground on the basis of the shared values of meritocracy and non-discrimination against the poor in favor of bankers and the rich.
Congress, however, tends to move very slowly so we’ll see whether they’ll be able to pass landmark legislations for a digital age to inspire a new generation and re-invigorate the economy.
Because while ICOs may have gotten some bad rep due to the abuse of them by some individuals, they can also be a far more efficient, far more accountable, far more convenient, method of fundraising.
A number of decent ICO-ed projects are now showing just how value can be created through the token economy to push forward the digital age.
While revelations that cryptos are now handling more trading volumes than the stock market of Britain and Germany combined, says it all by itself just how more efficient and just how more accessible cryptos are.
Those qualities can be brought to the entire economy, replacing the 90s paper with 21st century digital code.
Copyrights Trustnodes.com
