The Role of ICO Legal Regulation for Tech-startups’ Development within the Innovation Economy (Comparative Legal Analysis of Russia and Singapore)

The purpose of the research. The article considers the problems of attracting investment in projects among small technology companies in the Russian Federation, even in the context of the today’s global economy, in which innovation has become an integral factor of economic growth and development. To solve this problem, the purpose of the research is to consider the approach of attracting financing through ICO, as well as to propose recommendations for amending the current regulatory legal documents in Russia in order to improve the efficiency of regulation of this sphere. To develop recommendations, foreign experience of ICO implementation was also studied on the example of Singapore. The historical and systematic approaches, comparative analysis and content analysis were used in the study, as well as data from Russian Federal State Statistics Service, the Government of the Russian Federation, the World Intellectual Property Organization, and the Central Bank of Singapore.

Results. As a result of the study, the authors conclude that it is worth making changes to the system of Russian legislation in order to introduce a wide practice of ICOs in the Russian Federation. These changes include amendments to the Federal Law «On the Central Bank of Russia», amendments to the Federal Law «On Digital Financial Assets», as well as the implementation of a progressive ICO implementation policy consisting of three stages.