Initial Crypto-asset Offerings (ICOs), tokenization and corporate\n governance

This paper discusses the potential impacts of the so-called `initial coin\nofferings', and of several developments based on distributed ledger technology\n(`DLT'), on corporate governance. While many academic papers focus mainly on\nthe legal qualification of DLT and crypto-assets, and most notably in relation\nto the potential definition of the latter as securities/financial instruments,\nthe authors analyze some of the use cases based on DLT technology and their\npotential for significant changes of the corporate governance analyses. This\narticle studies the consequences due to the emergence of new kinds of firm\nstakeholders, i.e. the crypto-assets holders, on the governance of small and\nmedium-sized enterprises (`SMEs') as well as of publicly traded companies.\nSince early 2016, a new way of raising funds has rapidly emerged as a major\nissue for FinTech founders and financial regulators. Frequently referred to as\ninitial coin offerings, Initial Token Offerings (`ITO'), Token Generation\nEvents (`TGE') or simply `token sales', we use in our paper the terminology\nInitial Crypto-asset Offerings (`ICO'), as it describes more effectively than\n`initial coin offerings' the vast diversity of assets that could be created and\nwhich goes far beyond the payment instrument issue.\n