On April 24, 2019, the New York Attorney General filed a petition in New York state court, alleging that Bitfinex (i.e., iFinex, Inc., BFXNA Inc., and BFXWW Inc.) and Tether (i.e., Tether Holdings Limited, Tether Operations Limited, Tether Limited, and Tether International Limited) hid a loss of more than US…
On April 24, 2019, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia granted in part and denied in part a motion to dismiss a complaint alleging that the controlling shareholders of FLiK, a company designed to create an online distribution platform for entertainment projects, violated Sections 12(a) and…
On March 31, 2019, the U. S. District Court for the Southern District of New York denied a motion to dismiss a putative class action complaint alleging that ATBCOIN LLC (“ATBCOIN”) and its co-founders and officers (Edward Ng and Herbert W. Hoover) violated Sections 12(a) and 15 of the Securities…
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 8, 2019, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida granted in part and denied in part the plaintiffs’ motion for summary judgment dismissing a putative class action complaint alleging (among other things) that Monkey Capital, LLC and Monkey Capital Inc. (collectively “Monkey Capital”) violated Sections…
On September 26, 2018, a federal judge in Massachusetts agreed with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s (“CFTC”) view that virtual currencies are commodities under the Commodity Exchange Act (“CEA”) and subject to federal regulation. See CFTC v. My Big Coin Pay, Inc., No. CV 18-10077-RWZ, 2018 WL 4621727 (D. Mass….
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. …
While the rise of cryptocurrencies has highlighted the usefulness of blockchain technology, involving the creation of decentralized, electronic ledgers to track transactions, this technology is applicable to other fields, including financial services and pharmaceuticals. Contemporaneously, the number of pending US patent applications that incorporate blockchain technology has increased dramatically. But…
In our August 9 blog post, we discussed the Bitfinex hack that rattled the bitcoin markets and raised serious questions about the security of bitcoin wallets and allocating risk in this new age of cyber theft. Through a simple phishing email that contained a virus, hackers were able to gain access to…