The Hong Kong Securities & Futures Professionals Association, an industry trade group, has suggested the city's authorities should consider creating an initial coin offering (ICO) portal.

ICOs are a method of fundraising, similar to initial public offerings (IPOs) that became popular shortly after the launch of Ethereum in 2015. Many of the most popular Web3 protocols got their start as ICOs, and while there was a ICO bust – because many were scams – during the 2017-2018 crypto winter, they turned out to be a good investment for many long-term holders.

The problem with ICOs, however, is that the majority, under current interpretations of the law, were flagrant violations of securities rules.

Hong Kong was a hotbed of ICO listings during their heyday, but regulators pushed hard to have exchanges de-list many of the tokens.

So-called "legal" ICOs, known as security token offerings (STO), which started around 2019-2020, weren't much of a hit with investors in Asia, as CoinDesk reported at the time. Many STO portals had minimal trading volume.

But times have changed, and with a bull market on the horizon, it could be the time to give legal ICOs another chance.

免责声明：本文章仅代表作者个人观点，不代表本平台的立场和观点。本文章仅供信息分享，不构成对任何人的任何投资建议。用户与作者之间的任何争议，与本平台无关。如网页中刊载的文章或图片涉及侵权，请提供相关的权利证明和身份证明发送邮件到support@aicoin.com，本平台相关工作人员将会进行核查。