BlockBeats News, August 28, according to Bloomberg, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has proposed rules this month to reopen public token sales to U.S. investors, allowing up to $5 million in funding for crypto startups, with larger projects able to raise up to $75 million per year without completing a full SEC registration.

Unlike the ICO boom of 2017, the new framework will require issuers to provide disclosure and may result in higher compliance costs; rules for secondary market trading of tokens remain complex. The proposal also intends to allow investment contracts associated with the tokens to terminate once the issuer has completed or permanently ceased its promised managerial work to investors, instead of being permanently tied to the existence of the tokens.

However, market demand has shifted. Speculative funds are currently more focused on Bitcoin and a few mainstream tokens, perpetual contracts, prediction markets, and AI concept stocks; the number of token financing rounds involving crypto venture capital has significantly decreased, and some large VC firms have also expanded their investment scope to include AI, robotics, and other cutting-edge technologies. In contrast, ICOs raised around $3 billion in a single month at the peak in January 2018.

Tom Schmidt, General Partner at Dragonfly, stated that the proposal is "obviously better than nothing," but the more pressing issue now is the regulatory matters that were originally supposed to be addressed by the stalled CLARITY Act in Congress, rather than fundraising. Carlos Guzman, Research Analyst at GSR, commented that ICOs in 2026 are different from those in 2018, and the era when funds could be attracted solely based on a whitepaper and vision has come to an end.