The payments processor facilitated millions of dollars of PlexCoin investments before shuttering accounts in September 2017. Source link
ICO
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) settled unregistered securities offering charges against online gaming and gambling platform Unikrn for conducting an initial coin offering (ICO) in 2017. Commissioner Hester M. Peirce, an outspoken advocate for cryptocurrencies, dissented. According to a press release Tuesday, the SEC alleged that between June and October 2017, Unikrn Inc. raised approximately $31 million through the UnikoinGold (UKG) token sale in […]
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) charged two crypto startups and eight individuals including rapper Clifford Harris Jr., more commonly known as T.I., with violating the Securities Act of 1933 and other charges due to their involvement with a pair of initial coin offerings (ICOs). The SEC alleged Friday that film producer Ryan Felton misappropriated funds and wash traded cryptocurrencies using the proceeds from two […]
Shiv Malik is the author of two books, the co-founder of the Intergenerational Foundation think tank and a former investigative journalist for the Guardian. He currently evangelizes about a new decentralized data economy for the open source project Streamr. Last week, the eminent anthropologist and co-founder of the Occupy movement, David Graeber, passed away aged just 59. His tome on the origins of money and finance, […]
Decentralized finance (DeFi) has exploded in 2020, but retail interest in the space remains quite low, if measured by Google search queries. These suggest it may still be too early to draw parallels between DeFi’s growth and the initial coin offering (ICO) bubble of the final months of 2017 and early 2018. Indexed to the peak of searches for “ICO,” searches on Google Trends for the […]
A U.S. lawsuit that alleged the Tezos ICO was an unregistered securities sale has been settled for $25 million. Source link
Donna Redel is the former chairman of COMEX, a board member of New York Angels and an Adjunct Professor of Law at Fordham Law School. Olta Andoni is an Adjunct Professor at Chicago-Kent College of Law and Of Counsel at Zlatkin Wong, LLP. A corner of the crypto universe representing less than 1% of total market capitalization of crypto assets has been grabbing the headlines since […]
Having only settled with the SEC last year, the PlexCoin founders now face a fresh round of charges from the Department of Justice. Source link
The initial coin offering boom of 2017 and 2018 was the closest crypto came to mass adoption. It was a period of market and media exuberance. The Gray Lady, aka the New York Times, perhaps looking to court the new taste-makers and the hilariously wealthy, published think pieces about the crypto revolution and the leaders behind it. About 1,000 different token projects raised over $22 billion […]
U.S. prosecutors have secured a guilty plea from Sohrab Sharma, a co-founder of the Centra Tech initial coin offering (ICO) fraud. Disclosure The leader in blockchain news, CoinDesk is a media outlet that strives for the highest journalistic standards and abides by a strict set of editorial policies. CoinDesk is an independent operating subsidiary of Digital Currency Group, which invests in cryptocurrencies and blockchain startups. Source […]
A federal judge ordered Eran Eyal, the founder of the Shopin cryptocurrency, to pay $450,000 in fines last week as a result of allegations he committed fraud. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) alleged in December 2019 that Eyal, an Israeli national, committed a $42 million initial coin offering fraud, claiming he misappropriated at least $500,000 in investor funds. The SEC’s suit came within days […]
BitClave, a California startup whose Ethereum-based search engine raised $25.5 million in a 2017 token sale, will pay back its 9,500 investors in a settlement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The settlement ended BitClave’s court saga almost as soon as it began. Prosecutors with the SEC announced their charges Thursday in tandem with an order that called BitClave’s Consumer Activity Token (CAT) sale […]
A federal court has frozen all funds raised in a $9 million token sale the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has accused of being fraudulent. In a filing earlier this month, the U.S. District Court sitting in Austin, Texas, froze the assets of the individuals and entities believed to have received funds from the Meta 1 Coin initial coin offering (ICO). The court agreed with the […]