There’s an assumption being made that the SEC has a vastly different way of looking at investor protection than securities regulators in other jusrisdicions. I’m sure there will be some regulatory arbitrage going on, but if an ICO is a security it doesn’t make it automatically illegal, it just means they have to follow rules established that are mostly there to legally bind the organization to disclose information to investors and follow certain governance standards.

Some jurisdictions also don’t require normal stock offerings to follow rules as strict as the SEC does. It doesn’t stop the US from having many of the largest stock markets in the world, and a very high level of public participation in equity investing.