Abstract
One of the many ways of financing business corporations is to raise funds from the pu-blic. Regardless of the purpose for which the company intends to use the financing, this is an area under the scrutiny of the Czech National Bank.
The collection of money from individuals (retail investors) is, due to the high level of their protection, primarily a public law area subject to several areas of financial regulation simultaneously. These regimes may even overlap, raising questions as to which of them is preferably applied to a given method and business model.
Especially with the development of technology, corporations have gained easy access to mobilise this kind of capital. Such offerings have typically fallen under the long-standing regulation of so-called public offerings and the obligation of issuers to prepare a prospectus.
However, in the era of virtuali-sation and tokenisation, the consideration issued to investors may not only be securi-ties (or investment instruments) to which the traditional public offering rules apply, but also various forms of participation (i.e. participation) in loans, real estate, commo-dities, etc. The legal regulation of these crowdfunding models, which has been adopted at EU level, is currently awaiting its full effect.
However, the Czech National Bank, as a supervisory authority, does not hesitate to use other measures, namely to designate the business models in question as illegal funds, which are prohibited by the regulations on collective investment.