Certain advertise experts have endeavored to highlight the utility or voucher-like characteristics of their proposed ICOs in an exertion to claim that their proposed tokens or coins are not securities. Numerous of these statements that the government securities laws don't apply to a particular ICO show up to promote frame over substance. The rise of these form-based contentions may be a aggravating drift that denies financial specialists of obligatory assurances that clearly are required as a result of the structure of the exchange. Only calling a token a ‘utility’ token or organizing it to supply a few utility does not anticipate the token from being a security.

In a more nuanced discourse conveyed in June 2018, William Hinman, the SEC’s Chief of Corporate Back, expressed:

Returning to the ICOs I am seeing, strictly speaking, the token – or coin or anything the computerized data bundle is called – all by itself isn't a security, fair as the orange forests in Howey were not. Central to deciding whether a security is being sold is how it is being sold and the sensible desires of buyers. When somebody buys a lodging unit to live in, it is likely not a security. But beneath certain circumstances, the same resource can be advertised and sold in a way that causes financial specialists to have a sensible desire of benefits based on the endeavors of others. For case, in the event that the lodging unit is advertised with a administration contract or other administrations, it can be a security.