When it comes to fulfilling their responsibilities related to the new world of virtual assets, regulators across the world are caught between a rock and a hard place. Protecting consumers from fraud can be exceedingly difficult when current regulations on the books cannot be easily applied to the crypto ecosphere. The European Securities and Markets…
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It is that time of year again when “wannabe” futurists try their hands at guessing what the future might bring. As we have learned from 2018, the cryptocurrency ecosphere is a fast changing tide of new ideas, new attacks from regulators and government officials, and, yes, new blockchain development projects and their respective Initial Coin…
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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…
Read moreThe Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has announced that it has charged 13 individuals and 10 companies for unlawfully selling securities of Woodbridge Group of Companies LLC to retail investors. The SEC has now charged 18 of Woodbridge’s highest-earning unregistered sales agents who sold more than $400 million of its securities to retail investors,” said Eric…
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UBS (NYSE:UBS) has agreed to pay $15 million total fine to FINRA, SEC and FinCEN. The financial services company failed to implement anti-money laundering programs. Susan Schroeder, FINRA’s Executive Vice President, Department of Enforcement, commented on the news: AML systems must be reasonably designed to monitor transactions for potentially suspicious activity. When firms are part of…
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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…
Read moreThe Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has informed the public that it has charged a former New York-based investment adviser and his daughter with conducting a multi-million dollar Ponzi scheme. The individuals have defrauded local community members as well as members of their family and close friends. The official announcement by SEC reads as follows:…
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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…
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The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has announced that the federal court has fined AriseBank’s two former execs nearly $2.7 million. Former CEO Jared Rice Sr. and then-COO Stanley Ford were accused of offering and selling unregistered investments in their purported “AriseCoin” cryptocurrency. The allegedly fraudulent initial coin offering (ICO) scheme was stopped by the SEC earlier…
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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