What is jurisdictional eligibility?

Jurisdictional eligibility is whether a given person, at a given moment, may lawfully take a given action, a question that increasingly differs per asset and per transaction rather than per venue.

From venue rules to asset rules

For most of the history of online compliance, eligibility was a property of the venue. A sportsbook licensed in New Jersey served people in New Jersey. An exchange that did not serve U.S. persons blocked U.S. persons. One rule, one geofence.

Tokenised assets change that. Two instruments on the same platform, bought through the same screen, can carry opposite rules.

An example: Regulation S and Rule 506(c)

A token offered under Regulation S is offered outside the United States, and its rules turn on the sale being an offshore transaction with no directed selling efforts in the U.S. A token offered under Rule 506(c) can be sold to U.S. accredited investors, with reasonable steps taken to verify their status. On the same platform, a person in New York may be eligible for the second and not the first, and a person in London the reverse.

The permitted region now depends on the instrument, so each transaction needs its own check.

What that asks of a location check

• It has to run per action, not once. See in-process geolocation.
• It has to accept the region as an input, because the region depends on the asset.
• It has to leave a record that the right region was checked for the right action.

Octet’s predicates take the region as an argument: isWithin(region) or isOutside(region), evaluated on the device and signed, so the same SDK can answer a different question for each instrument.

Nothing on this page is legal advice. Whether a given offering is eligible in a given place is a question for counsel. The location check supplies only the fact the answer depends on.

Last reviewed 19 October 2026