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Through their recent actions and statements, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has further clarified their position with respect to digital assets and ICOs. Following on from earlier enforcement efforts throughout 2017 and 2018, the SEC Enforcement Division settled cases with AirFox and Paragon, two issuers of unregistered securities in tokenized form, in addition to

The SEC and FINRA recently announced a series of enforcement actions against new types of actors in the digital asset space—private fund managers and broker-dealers.
Continue Reading SEC and FINRA Target Cryptocurrency Hedge Fund Manager and Broker-Dealers in New Wave of Digital Asset Enforcement Proceedings

On August 7, Judge Richard Seeborg of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California denied in part a motion to dismiss (the “Order”) sought by the defendants in In Re Tezos Securities Litigation (the “Tezos Case”). Among other important insights, the Order’s reasoning illustrates the potentially broad reach of the U.S. federal securities laws to blockchain token sellers outside the United States.
Continue Reading Key Takeaways From the Tezos Litigation

From Uncertainty toward Regulatory Clarity: Senior SEC Officials Provide Regulatory Clarity for Digital Assets

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On June 14, 2018, the Director of the Division of Corporation Finance of the Securities and Exchange Commission delivered a speech outlining the framework used by the SEC Staff in

On February 6, 2018, the United States Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs conducted a hearing entitled “Virtual Currencies: The Oversight Role of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission.” Hearing. The Chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Jay Clayton, and the Chairman

Just like the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) is actively policing the virtual currency market.  On January 24, 2018, the CFTC announced an enforcement action against two individuals and a company, My Big Coin Pay, Inc., for fraudulently offering the sale of a “fully functioning” virtual currency. Press Release, CFTC Charges Randall Crater, Mark Gillespie, and My Big Coin Pay, Inc. with Fraud and Misappropriation in Ongoing Virtual Currency Scam (Jan. 24, 2018), http://www.cftc.gov/PressRoom/PressReleases/pr7678-18
Continue Reading CFTC Flexes Its Regulatory Muscle in a Case Involving a Virtual Currency

The SEC is targeting ICOs once again, but it is now adding more focus through its new Enforcement Division Cyber Unit.

  • In its enforcement settlement with Munchee, Inc., the SEC looked past the utility of a “utility token” in its “securities” analysis and instead focused on aspects such as marketing and the existence of a

On Friday, December 1, 2017, the SEC filed an emergency action in federal district court in Brooklyn alleging that Dominic Lacroix and Sabrina Paradis-Roger, both from Quebec, Canada, raised approximately $15 million in a purported fraudulent unregistered Initial Coin Offering (ICO) involving PlexCoin.  In its complaint, the SEC alleged that a recidivist Quebec securities law

On July 25, 2017, the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) released groundbreaking materials relating to blockchain tokens. These materials provide significant and welcome insight to the SEC’s and its staff’s thinking in this area, although they leave a number of important questions unanswered.

The SEC released a detailed investigative report under Section 21(a)