On January 8, 2020, the SEC announced that it had charged Donald G. Blakstad and two entities he controlled with engaging in the fraudulent offer and sale of over $3.5 million of securities. The SEC’s complaint alleges that, between July 2015 and May 2019, Blakstad induced investors to purchase the securities of companies he controlled, including both Energy Sources International Corporation and Xact Holdings Corporation, by making materially false and misleading statements and omissions about…
We have previously reported on the SEC’s case against Longfin Corp and its founding CEO and controlling shareholder, Venkata Meenavalli. The SEC’s complaint alleged that Longfin and Meenavalli obtained qualification for a Regulation A+ offering by falsely representing in public filings that the company was managed and operated in the U.S. According to the complaint, Longfin and Meenavalli then distributed over 400,000 Longfin shares to Meenavalli’s affiliates, and misrepresented the offering to Nasdaq in order to meet…
A group of investors in Ripple’s cryptocurrency XRP filed an amended complaint exploiting recent guidance published by the Strategic Hub for Innovation and Financial Technology (FinHub) of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The SEC’s “Framework for ‘Investment Contract’ Analysis of Digital Assets” provides guidance for evaluating whether a particular cryptocurrency has the characteristics of an “investment contract” and therefore subject to registration under federal securities laws. The SEC’s “Framework” identifies each of the…
Crypto exchange startup INX Limited filed a preliminary prospectus outlining its plans to raise between $5 million and $129.5 million in an initial public offering (IPO), making it one of few cryptocurrency companies to seek a U.S. listing for its tokens through registration of a public offering. INX filed a prospectus with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in August in anticipation of an offering of approximately 130 million INX security tokens. Leveraging guidance…
Cryptoassets continue to be a hot topic for financial services regulators. On 19 October 2018, it was the turn of the Securities and Markets Stakeholders Group (“SMSG“), which represents various stakeholders’ interests to the European Securities Markets Authority (“ESMA“). The SMSG published a report setting out its advice to ESMA on how to contain the risks of cryptoassets and ICOs.
On Tuesday, September 11, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (“FINRA”) took its first disciplinary action against an industry professional, charging a broker, Timothy Tilton Ayre, with securities fraud and the unlawful distribution of an unregistered cryptocurrency security, HempCoin. FINRA’s complaint alleges that Ayre attempted to lure public investment in his public company, Rocky Mountain Ayre, Inc., by issuing and selling HempCoin. Ayre made a host of fraudulent statements about his company’s business and finances, as…
Lithuania becomes the latest jurisdiction to release guidance in relation to ICOs. On 8 June 2018, the Lithuanian Government released new Guidelines to deal with what it referred to as an “explosion of ICOs” in the country. Lithuania heralds itself as a leader in FinTech and has published the ICO Guidelines as a step towards more “certainty and transparency in the regulatory, taxation [and] accounting” requirements of ICOs, and also, importantly, to encourage the crypto…
On June 6, U.S. SEC Chairman Jay Clayton was interviewed on CNBC about Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies. He said, in effect, that “cryptocurrencies, these are replacements for sovereign currencies, replace the dollar, the euro, the yen with bitcoin… that type of currency is not a security.” As a securities lawyer and SEC defense counsel, I thought this was an absolutely correct statement of law, and refreshing candor from the SEC Chairman. What has concerned me over…
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission obtained a court order freezing more than $27 million in trading proceeds from allegedly illegal distributions and sales of restricted shares of Longfin Corp. stock involving the company, its CEO, and three other affiliated individuals. According to a complaint unsealed last Friday in federal court in Manhattan, shortly after Longfin began trading on NASDAQ and announced the acquisition of a purported cryptocurrency business, its stock price rose dramatically and…
A class action lawsuit was brought today on behalf of investors in Nano f/k/a RaiBlocks (XRB), alleging, according to the plaintiffs’ lawyers, that Nano and key members of its core team violated federal securities laws and that, in their push to introduce XRB to a wide market of investors, recklessly directed investors to open accounts and place their assets with a little known, and severely troubled, Italian cryptocurrency exchange called BitGrail. On February 9, 2018,…