The wheels of justice can turn awfully slowly at times, but eventually significant precedents are constructed, which can enable a torrent of lawsuits to follow where losses have been excessively harsh. Such is the case in the world of Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs), or so it seems, according to a recent court filing in the…
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FINRA has informed the public that it has fined Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith Inc. for improperly selling shares in initial public offerings (IPOs) to industry insiders. Merrill Lynch will pay a $5.5 million fine, and disgorge $490,530 it earned as revenue from the sales. IPOs included Facebook, Inc. (NASDAQ:FB), General Motors Co. (NYSE:GM),…
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Cryptocurrencies have been labeled the most volatile asset class in history, and for that reason, many of the monitoring services employed by traditional stock exchanges to ferret out price manipulation or pump-and-dump schemes just do not work in the crypto world. Jay Clayton, the chairman of the SEC, has continually castigated exchanges in the crypto…
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The SEC is determined to eradicate the rampant fraud that persists within the Initial Coin Offering (ICO) space. Steven Peikin, co-director of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s enforcement division, recently delivered a speech to the Harvard Law School’s Program on International Financial Systems in which he made known his agency’s desire to clean up the…
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Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) have gotten a bad reputation due to rampant fraud and the lack of transparency. Regulators, in their attempt to protect unsuspecting investors, have launched attacks to classify all cryptocurrencies, with the exception of Bitcoin and Ether, as securities and thereby subject to more stringent registration and disclosure requirments. The SEC has…
Read moreCrypto enthusiasts were cheering what many reports were calling a “Monumental” ruling by a Federal Court. The court ruled in favor of Blockvest, a crypto Initial Coin Offering (ICO) that was still in its initial testing phase, well before any real investing had ever taken place. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) had shuttered…
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The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) recently released its fiscal Annual Report for 2018, which outlined the five principles that will guide its assessment of its performance, but which also revealed an accelerated focus on digital assets, with a primary emphasis on Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs). The ICO space has been perceived as the “Wild…
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Cryptocurrency articles proliferate the headlines these days, but more often than not, the subject matter deals with victims and the losses they have sustained at the hands of clever conmen. Per one insider: “As fascinating as the crypto-sphere might be, it’s definitely not a place for the faint-hearted. Sure, cryptocurrencies have taken the world by…
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On the occasion of the 2018 Annual Conference and following the launch of the UNICORN programme (Universal Node to ICO’s Research & Network) one year earlier which accompanies fundraising initiatives based on cryptocurrencies, the AMF has published a study on ICOs both in France and globally. This study is based on two main parts: the…
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ICOs are said to surpass the volume of IPOs in the future. Initial coin offerings are literally booming around the world, where even Youtube uploads education videos on how to create your own ICO. Many companies try to raise money by issuing tokens in several rounds and fund their business. What happens, however, when your…
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