On February 27, 2019, the Department of Justice (“DOJ”) announced the indictment of Randall Crater, founder and principal operator of My Big Coin Pay Inc. (“My Big Coin”) by a federal grand jury sitting for the District of Massachusetts for his alleged participation in a scheme to defraud investors by…
On February 20, 2019, the Enforcement Division of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) issued an Order Instituting Cease-And-Desist Proceedings Pursuant To Section 8a Of The Securities Act Of 1933, Making Findings, And Imposing A Cease-And-Desist Order (“Order”) [1] against Gladius Network LLC (“Gladius”) for an initial coin offering…
This past week was a busy one for state securities regulators, the CFTC and the SEC as they continue their focus on rooting out fraud from the digital currency space and crypto- and blockchain-based ventures. Noteworthy developments included (1) the North American Securities Administrators Association (NASAA) announcing a “cryptosweep” –…
In the fall of 2017, the United States Department of Justice (“DOJ”) and the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) each filed actions against Maksim Zaslavskiy for securities fraud in connection with two token offerings, through which he promised token purchasers profits from his companies’ investments in real estate and diamonds. …
The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) last week sued Longfin Corp., a financial technology company that recently entered the cryptocurrency space, as well as Longfin’s CEO and three others affiliated with the company. The complaint, filed in federal court in Manhattan, was unsealed on April 6, 2018, when the SEC…
The 2018 iteration of Yahoo! Finance’s All Markets Summit, taking place on Tuesday, February 7, 2018, will focus solely on cryptocurrency. From Bitcoin and blockchain to ICOs, in conjunction with CoinDesk, Yahoo! Finance will lead a series of conversations with CEOs, engineers, policy makers and legal experts on the growing…
As originally published by Brave New Coin, January 19, 2018. As we transition from 2017 into 2018, there has been an increase in SEC and state regulator activity in the area of Initial Coin Offerings (“ICOs”), as the agencies seek to determine (i) whether certain ICOs constitute a sale of unregistered securities;…
On Friday, the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) issued FAQ 551 stating that U.S. persons who deal in the prospective Venezuelan digital currency (the “Petro”) may be exposed to U.S. sanctions risk under Executive Order 13808. In December 2017, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro announced plans for the Government of…
On January 19, 2018, SEC Co-Enforcement Directors Stephanie Avakian and Steven Peikin and CFTC Enforcement Director James McDonald issued the following joint statement regarding virtual currency enforcement actions: “When market participants engage in fraud under the guise of offering digital instruments – whether characterized as virtual currencies, coins, tokens, or…
In the wake of the SEC’s clarifying guidance in Munchee[1] regarding the application of the federal securities laws to initial coin offerings (“ICOs”), there has been increased activity among both federal and state regulators as they seek to deter what they deem to be sales of unregistered securities in the…