While the SEC has not issued formal guidance on ICOs, chairman Jay Clayton has repeatedly stated in public appearances his belief that every ICO token he's seen is a security.
In a now somewhat-famous statement during an event at Princeton University in April, Clayton used an analogy to explain how he viewed token sales.
"If I have a laundry token for washing my clothes, that's not a security," he remarked. "But if I have a set of 10 laundry tokens and the laundromats are to be developed and those are offered to me as something I can use for the future and I'm buying them because I can sell them to next year's incoming class, that's a security."
