Despite the risks associated with Initial Coin Offerings, the trend has become extremely popular in areas throughout the world. In an effort to reduce the risk of fraud, money laundering and tax avoidance, several countries have banned ICOs.

South Korea was one of these, as the Financial Services Commission, a government department in-charge with financial policies and supervision, banned domestic ICOs in September 2017. Now, recent reports indicate that the South Korean National Assembly has proposed the idea of lifting the ban placed on domestic ICOs.

Mt Gox, the now-defunct bitcoin exchange, has been out of the media headlines for a few years now, given the fact that it entered bankruptcy following the disappearance of hundreds of millions of dollars-wroth of bitcoin.

However, recent reports now indicate that the Mark Karpeles, the CEO of the digital currency exchange is considering the idea of launching an Initial Coin Offering, in order to revive the exchange. As controversial as this may sound, Mark Karpeles wrote a blog post detailing the possible implications of an Mt Gox ICO.

In the past, raising money as a start-up required small companies to convince banks, investors and financial institutions to take big risks, by investing large amounts of money into unproven technology and ideals. However, this has changed with the appearance of Initial Coin Offerings, also known as ICOs.

For those who do not know, an ICO represents a crowdfunding event that start-ups and other companies use in order to raise money for their business venture. It is a form of symbiosis between the well-known Kickstarter projects and Initial Public Offerings. Therefore, upon making an investment, people receive tokens that will then increase in value when the company reaches success- therefore, companies are making their shares available to the investing public without having to get listed onto the stock market. However, it is important to point out that these tokens aren’t exactly shares of the company, yet as the start-up in question becomes more profitable, so will these tokens which can be traded on exchanges for real money.