An SEC spokesman declined to comment on the meeting.Thousands of virtual currencies have been created through so-called initial coin offerings in which entrepreneurs sold digital tokens to raise money for their projects. These coins mostly trade on unregulated virtual currency exchanges. No regulated securities exchanges offer virtual currency trading.Most investors assume that bitcoin is safe from being categorized as a security because it was not originally issued through an initial coin offering or central organization. Some large virtual currencies, like Litecoin and Monero, have similar designs.But Ethereum, the virtual currency network that houses the Ether virtual currency, did raise money by selling Ether tokens to investors through what was then called a pre-sale and is now often called an initial coin offering. The Ethereum Foundation took in bitcoin that were worth around $18 million at the time.

Source: Economic Times April 20, 2018 03:22 UTC