On September 15, 2020, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission announced charges against Unikrn Inc., an operator of an online eSports gaming and gambling platform for conducting an unregistered initial coin offering (ICO) of digital asset securities. Unikrn agreed to settle the charges by paying a $6.1 million penalty, substantially all of the company’s assets, to be distributed to investors through a Fair Fund. According to the SEC’s order, between June and October 2017, Unikrn raised approximately…
INX Limited, a Gibraltar-based private company formed in 2017, announced on August 24 that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) declared as effective INX Limited’s Form F-1 registration statement. A Form F-1 is the registration required for foreign companies seeking to issue securities under U.S. federal law. This approval marks the first instance in which the SEC has cleared a full registration statement for a public offering of crypto-tokens. The SEC has previously approved…
On August 13, 2020, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission announced charges against Virginia-based Boon.Tech and its chief executive officer Rajesh Pavithran for fraud and registration violations in connection with a $5 million initial coin offering of digital asset securities. According to the SEC’s from November 2017 to January 2018, Boon.Tech and Pavithran raised approximately $5 million by selling Boon Coins to more than 1,500 investors in the U.S. and worldwide to raise funding to…
Last month, the French Financial Markets Regulator (AMF) delivered an ICO “VISA” to a company called WPO, which plans to issue a GreenToken between September and November of this year. WPO is one of Europe’s leading independent asset management and service platforms, specialising in wind and solar energy. WPO claims to have the capacity to collect and analyse a huge set of data relating to wind and solar assets, thereby enabling it to improve the…
France has regulated Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) and intermediaries providing crypto-asset services by virtue of its PACTE law n° 2019-486 of 22 May 2019. Its aim was twofold: France wanted to attract meritorious projects to its territory while also bringing this ecosystem within the ambit of regulation. Thus, while France transposed the EU Fifth Anti-Money Laundering-Directive (AML-Directive), it went a step further by imposing additional regulatory duties on intermediaries. In this respect, it has provided…
On May 28, 2020, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission announced charges against blockchain services company BitClave PTE Ltd. for conducting an unregistered initial coin offering of digital asset securities. In June 2017, BitClave began marketing the development of a platform called the BitClave Active Search Ecosystem (“BASE”). BitClave advertised that on BASE, once developed, customers would receive a digital asset the company created, CAT, in exchange for viewing and interacting with targeted ads. Around…
We previously reported here and here about the case the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission brought against Telegraph. In March, Judge Kevin Castel of the Southern District of New York granted the SEC’s preliminary injunction request preventing the distribution to purchasers of $1.7 billion worth of cryptocurrency called “Grams,” which were going to be allotted upon the launch of Telegram’s TON blockchain. Judge Castel then denied Telegram’s request that the injunction be limited so as not…
On April 24, 2020, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission brought suit in federal district court in California, charging Dropil, Inc. and its three founders, Jeremy McAlpine, Zachary Matar, and Patrick O’Hara, with defrauding investors in a fraudulent and unregistered initial coin offering (ICO) that raised more than $1.8 million from about 2500 investors. As the SEC announced, according to the complaint, from at least January to March 2018, Dropil sold DROP tokens, claiming that…
In a decision dated March 24, 2020, Judge Kevin Castel of the Southern District of New York granted a preliminary injunction request by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission preventing the distribution to purchasers of $1.7 billion worth of cryptocurrency called “Grams.” In 2018, Telegram sold “interests in Grams” to 175 entities and high-net-worth individuals. These “Gram Purchase Agreements” entitled the initial purchasers to receive an allotment of Grams upon launch of the TON Blockchain.…
On March 20, 2020, the district court unsealed the file in a case that U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission brought against three individuals accused of bilking investors inside and outside the U.S. The case was initially filed under seal because the Commission sought, and obtained, an asset freeze and other emergency relief to halt an ongoing securities fraud (as claimed by the Commission). The SEC’s complaint alleges that Florida residents Robert Dunlap and Nicole Bowdler…