Andy Bromberg, Co-founder and President at CoinList

In this episode of The Scoop, The Block speaks with Andy Bromberg, co-founder and president of CoinList, about the state of token sales and compliant fundraising in crypto roughly a year after the ICO boom collapsed. CoinList built its name running some of the industry's highest-profile compliant token sales, most notably Filecoin's 2017 offering, using frameworks designed to satisfy U.S. securities law while still allowing broad participation in early-stage crypto projects. 

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By August 2019, the freewheeling ICO market of 2017 and early 2018 had largely dried up amid regulatory scrutiny from the SEC and a wave of projects that failed to deliver on their promises, and Bromberg discusses how CoinList adapted its business as the fundraising landscape shifted toward more structured, compliance-first offerings. Bromberg walks through how CoinList's approach to due diligence and legal structuring evolved as regulators sharpened their stance on which tokens qualified as securities, and how the firm worked with project teams to design sales that could withstand that scrutiny.

He discusses specific deals CoinList had run or was preparing at the time, the growing role of accredited-investor-only offerings under exemptions like Reg D, and how secondary trading and liquidity for token holders remained an unresolved challenge across the industry. He also addresses how CoinList balanced its role as a platform serving both institutional and retail-adjacent investors with the practical realities of a market still recovering from the ICO bust.

The two also discuss the broader implications of that regulatory tightening for founders trying to raise capital, including the rise of alternative structures and the increasing overlap between traditional venture funding and token-based fundraising. Bromberg shares his view on where compliant token issuance was headed and what would need to change, both technologically and legally, for broader public participation in crypto fundraising to return. The conversation captures a pivotal moment for crypto capital formation, as the industry moved from ICO exuberance toward a more cautious, compliance-driven era.