SearcharxivSearch

arXiv · 2602.00138

Regulatory Migration to Europe: ICO Reallocation Following U.S. Securities Enforcement

Abstract

This paper examines whether a major U.S. regulatory clarification coincided with cross-border spillovers in crypto-asset entrepreneurial finance. We study the Securities and Exchange Commission's July 2017 DAO Report, which clarified the application of U.S. securities law to many initial coin offerings, and analyze how global issuance activity adjusted across regions. Using a comprehensive global dataset of ICOs from 2014 to 2021, we construct a region-month panel and evaluate issuance dynamics around the announcement. We document a substantial and persistent reallocation of ICO activity toward Europe following the DAO Report. In panel regressions with region and month fixed effects, Europe experiences an average post-2017 increase of approximately 14 additional ICOs per region-month relative to other regions, net of global market cycles. The results are consistent with cross-border regulatory spillovers in highly mobile digital-asset markets.

Explore related subjects

Keep this discovery

BibTeXRIS

Krishna Sharma, Khemraj Bhatt, Indra Giri. 2026-01-28. Regulatory Migration to Europe: ICO Reallocation Following U.S. Securities Enforcement. https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.00138

Cite the original work for its findings. Save a collection to share your selection of sources.

KEEP EXPLORING

Related papers

AI for AI: Optimizing Additional Infrastructure Build-out to Power Artificial Intelligence Data Centers

The twenty-first century's transformative technology, artificial intelligence, is increasingly constrained by the twentieth century's transformative technology, the electricity grid. Rapid growth in electricity demand from data centers is leading to higher electricity prices, without a compensating supply-side response. We develop a framework linking data-center load growth, available generation capacity, and market-clearing prices to understand this phenomenon. We first analyze a deterministic model to show how differing estimates of demand and supply growth rates affect prices. We then model the expansion of new data centers and their associated electricity demand, together with build-outs of new electricity supply, as stochastic processes,resulting in probabilistic distributions of supply, demand, and prices rather than a single forecast. Finally, we formulate generation expansion as a stochastic control problem in which a revenue-maximizing investor dynamically chooses the intensity of supply-side investments. The analysis highlights a central challenge of the data-center build-out: even when rapid demand growth increases the need for new generation, the uncertainties related to load forecasts, development execution risks, and value cannibalization from overbuilding capacity may weaken incentives to invest at the pace required to keep electricity prices stable.

q-fin.GN

Measuring DeFi Risk

Decentralized finance (DeFi) lending has grown from nonexistent in 2017 to nearly 40 billion US Dollars in deposited funds in May 2022. Using cryptocurrency as collateral, the platforms match speculative margin trading with yield-seeking depositors lending coins pegged to the dollar (stable coins). Depositors receive claims guaranteed by a basket of collateral, akin to new stable coins. We develop a framework requiring only knowledge of aggregate deposits and borrowings to measure overall system risks to lenders and borrowers. Using evidence from major protocols, the measures identify an increase in system fragility beyond prudent levels around mid 2021, with a potential loss of peg for extreme variations in coin prices. Overall, the model offers an easily implementable aggregate risk metric capturing the perspectives of synthetic investors and offers early warning signals as the industry is moving from deposits guaranteed by collateral to fiat money.

q-fin.GN

Historical Reflections on Interest Rates and the Emergence of the Yield Curve

This text grew out of a historical introduction initially written for a study of interest rates in cryptocurrency markets. The difficulty of defining a term structure for a currency without a conventional bond market led naturally to a more fundamental question: under what historical conditions does a yield curve become observable at all? Credit existed long before modern money, and interest-bearing loans are documented as early as ancient Mesopotamia. For much of history, the surviving evidence lacks the institutional features that facilitate reliable comparisons of interest rates by maturity: standardised debt instruments, sufficiently homogeneous borrowers, regular issuance over a range of maturities, observable market prices, and liquid secondary markets. We trace the gradual emergence of these conditions from ancient Mesopotamia, Greece, and Rome, through medieval and early modern Europe, to the development of modern sovereign debt markets in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

q-fin.GN