ICOs powered the crypto boom/bubble of 2017, but were slapped down and effectively banned by the Securities and Exchange Commission, or SEC, which declared virtually all of them illegal unregistered securities sales. The result ranged from multi-million dollar fines to the outright killing of projects such as Telegram’s TON blockchain.
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Kik to pay $5M fine, ending two-year legal fight with SEC
Although the multimillion-dollar fine might seem like a slap on the wrist given that Kik held a $100 million ICO, legal expenses have had a toll on the company
The proposal comes three weeks after Hellerstein handed down a summary judgment finding that Kik’s $100 million ICO was an unregistered and illegal securities offering. He decided that the offering for Kin tokens had met the three-part Howey test, which assesses whether there is an investment of money in a common enterprise with profits to be derived solely from the efforts of others.
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Telegram CEO Pavel Durov can't be smiling after yesterday's ruling (Photo: Steve Jennings/Getty Images for TechCrunch)Court to Telegram: $1.7 billion gram token sale is likely illegal
The Securities and Exchange Commission has a ‘substantial likelihood’ of winning an ICO test case against the messaging app firm’s planned sale of gram tokens for its TON blockchain
A federal judge issued a preliminary injunction stopping Telegram's planned resale of $1.7 billion in gram tokens, saying it is "part of a larger scheme to distribute those Grams into a secondary public market."
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SEC warns investors about initial exchange offerings
IEOs are the new ICOs, and the financial watchdog wants investors to take heed
The Securities and Exchange Commission issued an alert Tuesday, urging investors to proceed with caution before investing in IEOs through online trading platforms—which often tout themselves as exchanges—especially when those platforms are located overseas.
