# Legal In July, the Securities and Exchange Commission issued a ruling that some of the “coins” offered during recent ICOs are actually securities, and thereby are subject to the agency’s regulations. By offering dividends and profit-sharing such companies failed the Howey Test, created by the US Supreme Court for determining whether certain transactions qualify as “investment contracts.” **The Howey test consists of the following:** * Is it an investment of money or assets? * Is the investment of money or assets in a common enterprise? * Is there an expectation of profits from the investment? * Does any profit come from the efforts of a promoter or third party? Unlike other tokens , GNC is a utility token and its purpose is to facilitate services (copy- trading ) on the GERINO platform . GNC is not backed by real assets (such as real estate) and doesn’t grant their holders any dividends. As Tim Draper mentioned in his open letter: “If the purpose of a token is for societal transformation, and all proceeds go to the support and development of the token, it need not register.” --- # Agent Instructions: Querying This Documentation If you need additional information that is not directly available in this page, you can query the documentation dynamically by asking a question. Perform an HTTP GET request on the current page URL with the `ask` query parameter: ``` GET https://gitbookwhitepaper.gitbook.io/gnc-whitepaper/ico/legal.md?ask= ``` The question should be specific, self-contained, and written in natural language. The response will contain a direct answer to the question and relevant excerpts and sources from the documentation. Use this mechanism when the answer is not explicitly present in the current page, you need clarification or additional context, or you want to retrieve related documentation sections.