The US SEC has approved time and time again that ICOs are no joke and companies wishing to go for such “schemes” must obey by certain rules. The latest example of a company that filed an illegal ICO and got penalized by the SEC with a $250,000 fine is BCOT (Blockchain of Things Inc.)
The SEC has already ordered BCOT to return all funds to the investors who put funds into the ICO and the fine was agreed between the SEC and the issuer.
The ICO of BCOT raised around $13 million and it took place in December 2017. Back then, the cryptocurrency market was exploding and Bitcoin was hitting the $20,000 mark on a daily basis. Many of the ICOs turned out to be fraudulent and investors around the world lost their fair share of money.
What the company promoted is its platform that was to allow third-party developers to create applications for logging and message transmission, digital asset transfer services and digital asset generation.
However, the SEC accused the company of selling unregistered securities and sold its tokens to investors based in the US.
The ICO did not qualify for exemption from the special registration requirements and the company failed to undergo the official compliance procedure under the federal securities laws.
A representative from the SEC commented that the issuer did not disclose all relevant information to the investors about the securities offering. So, the SEC is working hard to provide transparency on the ICO market and protect potential investors from fraudulent behaviour.
As press reported, it was this week that the SEC also charged the blockchain company Shopin for their selling of unregistered securities and defrauding investors of around $40 million.