Notorious political lobbyist Jack Abramoff has pleaded guilty to charges of conspiring to defraud investors, conspiring to commit wire fraud, and violations of the Lobbying Disclosure Act relating to the 2018 initial coin offering (ICO) for AML BitCoin. Abramoff pleaded guilty by telephone on July 14, admitting to having defrauded millions from investors through the ICO. The plea marks the first prosecution of a lobbyist for a criminal violation of the Lobbying Disclosure Act. AML BitCoin’s founder Rowland Marcus Andrade is currently fighting criminal charges relating to the crypto offering, having entered a plea of not guilty on July 8. …

Thomas Lambert, Daniel Liebau, and Peter Roosenboom from the Rotterdam School of Management suggest that Security Token Offerings are better at financing start-ups than Initial Coin Offerings. Their research was published on July 14 via the University of Oxford Business Law blog. The research paper pointed out that although ICOs and STOs are both issued on distributed ledgers, the idea behind an ICO is “value creation for a community. Utility tokens in ICOs can only grant holders with consumptive rights on services or products and can not be seen as a “financing mechanism”. However, STOs can. Researchers explained that: “Tokens …

Sohrab Sharma, one of the co-founders of cryptocurrency firm Centra Tech facing charges related to a $25 million initial coin offering scam, is reportedly planning to plead guilty. According to a July 13 report from Bloomberg, Sharma may avoid a November trial date as his lawyers told a federal judge he would be interested in changing his plea. The announcement comes after Sharma’s associate Robert Farkas was convicted of conspiring to commit securities and wire fraud on June 16. Farkas faces up to 87 months in prison and a $250,000 fine. A history of scamming The U.S. Department of Justice …

Johann Schneider-Ammann, who served as the President of Switzerland in 2016, recently joined the board of Crypto Valley Venture Capital, or CV VC. CV VC is a venture capital firm that invests in crypto firms near Zug, Switzerland, the “crypto valley” of the namesake firm. Corresponding with Cointelegraph, Schneider-Ammann credited CV VC with creating “its own ecosystem,” but saw blockchain as a major factor in Switzerland’s future: “I am fascinated by the potential of this new technology and I am convinced that this gives us in Switzerland a unique opportunity to become a leader in the technology of the future.” …

The Tezos (XTZ) class-action lawsuit from law firm Block & Leviton will likely conclude in a $25-million settlement on August 27. Tezos, like many initial coin offerings (ICO) from 2017, has come under scrutiny from both investors and regulators alike alleging that its token sale constituted an illegal offering of securities. Indeed, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has come down hard on numerous 2017-era ICOs demanding penalties for securities violation. Even distributions to non-U.S. citizens have also come under the SEC’s radar, as was the case with Telegram. The SEC has consistently maintained that most ICOs are indeed …

Decentralized finance is all about cutting out traditional financial intermediaries such as banks. Through the use of blockchain technology, DeFi platforms allow individuals to generate money against their own assets, becoming their own bank, as it were. As an exciting new business paradigm, the DeFi sector has been warming up for some time. But during this past week, it got downright hot, and the current euphoria has some worried that a financial bubble may be forming reminiscent of the initial coin offering bubble of late 2017. Here are three events being cited: Exhibit A: Compound Governance Token (COMP), the governance …

On June 25, the United States Securities and Exchange Commission charged the issuer of AML Bitcoin — not to be confused with Bitcoin itself — with conducting a fraudulent offering. These charges follow up on a criminal filing in San Francisco from June 22. AML Bitcoin’s story Per the complaints, Rowland Marcus Andrade and his NAC Foundation raised upwards of $5.6 million in an initial coin offering (ICO) for AML Bitcoin beginning in August 2017 and continuing through 2018, amid the huge ICO boom of that time. The criminal charges filed against Andrade in San Francisco on June 22 refer …

A Californian federal judge has certified an investor class in a lawsuit alleging that the cannabis crypto firm Paragon Coin Inc violated securities laws in its 2017 initial coin offering (ICO) that raised $70 million. Paragon Coin promoted their ‘PRG’ tokens as comprising a currency for the cannabis industry and hired popular rapper The Game to promote the offering $70m crypto cannabis ICO to face federal claims On June 24, U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White granted the plaintiffs’ motion in-part on federal claims, however, he denied applications for claims at the state level on the behalf of investors based outside …

A judge has granted a motion from the U.S. attorney’s office to pause the SEC’s action against Edit Pardo and Boaz Manor for their involvement in the alleged $30 million crypto investment scam CG Blockchain. United States District Judge Stanley Chesler cited a parallel criminal investigation into Pardo and Manor in granting the motion to stay the Security and Exchange Commission's action, reasoning that halting the suit until the conclusion of the criminal proceedings “would best serve the interests of justice”. "A stay would strike the proper balance between the competing interest of allowing the parties to pursue civil litigation …

Decentralized finance’s (DeFi) surging popularity might backfire and hurt the forward-looking sector, Waves Association founder Sasha Ivanov told Cointelegraph in a recent interview. Ivanov compared DeFi to the 2017 ICO craze in a tweet earlier today, saying, “Please let's not make a new ICO bubble out of #DeFI.” When asked to elaborate on his statement, the founder noted that he strongly believes in DeFi, but is worried about the hype surrounding it: “DeFi is the future, but it's going to be coming through a bubble part of the cycle now, which can harm its long-term development.” In Ivanov’s opinion, DeFi …

Tether (USDT) makes a $10 million equity investment in the crypto lending platform Celsius Network (CEL) at a $120 million pre-money valuation, bringing the post-money valuation to $150 million. The company is raising a total of $30 million in equity which will bring its valuation to $150 million, but the round hasn’t closed yet. In 2018, Celsius completed a $50 million ICO. Celsius CEO Alex Mashinsky told Cointelgraph that his company has continued its policy of not fundraising from venture capital. Investors will have no say Mashinsky also pointed out that the equity sold in this round does not come …

France-based crypto asset issuance platform Tozex claims to have created a new vehicle for crypto financing that can offer firms a way out of the tough economic times due to the pandemic: the “Believers Reward Offering,” or BRO. Tozex claims that the BRO comprises “the first sustainable alternative” to initial coin offerings and security token offerings, allowing businesses to access financing by borrowing stablecoins from investors worldwide. BROs will save SMEs The firm’s announcement makes grand claims for BROs, describing the BRO as an “anti-crisis business solution.” The document claims that the fundraising vehicle will help small- to medium-sized enterprises …