On August 6, 2021, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced that it had charged two men, Gregory Keough and Derek Acree, and their company, Blockchain Credit Partners, doing business as DeFi Money Market (collectively, the “Respondents”), for unregistered sales of more than $30 million of securities using smart contracts and so-called “decentralized finance” (DeFi) … Continue Reading
Except for the extensive coverage surrounding Coinbase’s IPO last week and the volatility in the price of cryptocurrencies, much of the air in the crypto space in the last few months has been taken up by the meteoric rise of non-fungible tokens (NFTs). At this point, we will assume that readers have at least a … Continue Reading
Late last year, the SEC filed a litigated action in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York against Ripple Labs Inc. and two of its executive officers (collectively, “Ripple”), alleging that Ripple raised over $1.3 billion in unregistered offerings of the digital asset known as XRP. Ripple opted not to file a motion … Continue Reading
The Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) recently issued highly anticipated guidance to assist market participants in determining whether a digital asset is offered and sold as a security. On April 3, 2019, the SEC’s Strategic Hub for Innovation and Financial Technology published an analytical framework for evaluating whether the offer and sale of a digital … Continue Reading
In early March, the Manhattan U.S. Attorney unsealed indictments against the leaders of the Bulgarian-based “purported” cryptocurrency “OneCoin” on wire fraud, money laundering and federal securities fraud charges relating to an alleged $3 billion pyramid scheme devised to market OneCoin. OneCoin’s lawyer has also been charged with conspiracy to commit money laundering for allegedly conducting … Continue Reading
On February 20, 2019, the SEC announced that it settled charges against Gladius Network LLC (“Gladius”) for failing to register non-exempt offers and sales of securities in violation of Sections 5(a) and 5(c) of the Securities Act. While the SEC has previously settled charges relating to unregistered ICOs, this is one of few occasions since … Continue Reading
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