The Texas State Securities Board said yesterday that it entered an Emergency Cease and Desist Order to halt the multiple investment programs operated by BitConnect, an overseas company that claims a market share of $4.1 billion for its cryptocurrency coins. BitConnect’s investor solicitations promise returns of over 100 percent, the TSSB said, for BitConnect’s own proprietary cryptocurrency, called BitConnect Coins, or BCC. The enforcement action follows BitConnect’s recent announcement that it would hold an ICO…
One of the big questions surrounding ICOs is whether the “coin” (or token) offered in the ICO is considered a security and, therefore, subject to securities laws, including registration. One of the U.S. SEC’s first official statements on the matter, issued in response to the DAO debacle, was probably most famous for its lack of definitive statements. It said that:
[F]ederal securities law may apply to various activities, including distributed ledger technology, depending on the particular facts and circumstances, without regard to the form of the organization or technology used to effectuate a particular offer or sale