In late July 2017, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) did what many had expected for quite some time: It issued guidance that tokens—essentially assets, or ownership shares bought with cryptocurrency—can be regulated as securities under federal securities laws.
The guidance specially referred to tokens sold by The DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organization) that essentially acted as shares which paid dividends to its owners. The SEC made clear that it did not seek to create a blanket regulation, but would instead assess if tokens or cryptocurrency-backed trades were securities on a case-by-case basis.
