The South Korean initial coin offering project Contents Protocol will return 26,877 Ether (ETH) ($7.5 million at press time) to holders of its CPT token. Both legal obstacles and business challenges were cited as reasons for the shutdown. The details are visible on the project’s modified homepage, first recorded on Feb. 19. Its public ICO ended in December 2018 and collected almost 7,000 ETH, which was its funding goal. The remaining 22,000 ETH came from private token sales. The project was combined with a content platform developed by Watcha, the company behind the token. The idea was to reward platform …

Commissioner Hester Peirce of the United States Securities and Exchange Commission is known for her work on the regulator’s approach to crypto, enough to have earned the moniker “CryptoMom.” On Thursday, Feb. 6, she presented a new proposal looking to build a safe harbor for networks in their infancy seeking to avoid classification as securities. On Feb. 10, Cointelegraph got the chance to speak with the commissioner at greater length about her goals and hopes for the proposal. What is a safe harbor and why don’t firms want tokens to be securities? Briefly, Peirce’s proposal seeking to give tokens run …

The United States Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) has requested a deposition from a representative of Kik Interactive Inc. to provide detailed information about its operations since releasing native token Kin. Kik Interactive, the Canadian company behind the Kik messenger application, has been dragged into a long-standing legal battle with the U.S. regulator. The SEC claims that the company violated securities laws when it carried out Kik’s token distribution in 2017. On Jan. 23, a Manhattan federal judge ordered that Kik Interactive share with the SEC information detailing how its business has changed since 2018. As such, the regulator called Kik’s …

Blockvest, which is currently embroiled in a dangerous lawsuit with the SEC, obtained a small victory in a similar case filed by an elderly couple. However, the Jan. 21 court filing suggests that this is based on a legal technicality. The case against Blockvest was filed by Tommy and Christine Garrison, who alleged that the project violated securities law and regulations, and engaged in unlawful business conduct and financial elder abuse. The couple had filed the case against Rosegold Investments and Master Investment Group, the companies behind the project. They also cited Reginald Buddy Ringgold, III, aka Rasool Abdul Rahim …

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has charged Sergii Grybniak, the founder of the initial coin offering (ICO) project Opporty, according to a Jan. 21 press release. Despite raising approximately $600,000, the commission targeted Grybniak for falsely declaring the project as “100% SEC compliant.” Opporty launched its ICO between September and October 2018. The project purported to provide a “blockchain-based ecosystem for small businesses and their customers,” primarily in the United States. The platform was meant to be a place where small businesses could list their services and enter into agreement via smart contracts. The ICO for the OPP token …

During the first couple of months of 2019, the price of Bitcoin (BTC) stayed put under the $4,000 mark, thereby solidifying fears that the market was indeed in the midst of a long crypto winter. Not only that, but all through 2018, this space witnessed the simultaneous collapse of around 2,000 cryptocurrencies — which lost around 80% of their combined market cap. Additionally, it can be seen that over the course of 2018, the general perception of the crypto sector was greatly tarnished thanks to a number of scams and illegal actions that caused investors to lose a whole lot …

The United States Securities and Exchange Commision has charged a group of criminals, who raised over $30 million through a fraudulent initial coin offering (ICO). Per a Jan. 12 press release, the SEC charged convicted Boaz Manor, his business associate, and two companies, CG Blockchain Inc. and BCT Inc. SEZC, with violating the antifraud and securities registration provisions of the federal securities laws. Manor is a dual citizen of Canada and Israel. The entities allegedly raised more than $30 million in a fraudulent ICO, conducted with the objective to launch hedge funds testing technology to record transactions on blockchain. In …

The initial coin offering crypto buzz hit all-time high popularity in 2017 when there were 875 projects, a significant jump from 29 in the previous year. 2018 picked up on the trend, introducing a further 1,253 projects. To date, there have been a staggering 5,683 ICO projects with 2,318 of them being cryptocurrencies. Of the total projects, 4,932 are based on the Ethereum platform. However, only a few of these projects have lived up to expectations or the bear potential to pull through. A significant number have faded out and are now considered dead. Deadcoins, a platform that chronicles crypto …

Liquid Exchange has canceled the sale of Telegram Open Network’s (TON) Gram tokens, according to a Jan. 10 company post. The exchange returned the funds of all investors who participated in the unofficial sale. The exchange reportedly canceled the sale due to the delay in the launch of TON’s mainnet. At the time of the sale in July 2019, it was believed that the network would be live on Oct. 31. However, the launch was impeded by the SEC’s investigation into the original Gram offering, which it argues was an unregistered sale of securities. Liquid’s terms of sale stated that …

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) sent out a warning today from its Investor Education and Advocacy wing, urging citizens to be wary of initial coin offerings (IEOs). In a Jan. 14 statement on its website, the SEC said: “Be cautious if considering an investment in an IEO. Claims of new technologies and financial products, such as those associated with digital asset offerings, and claims that IEOs are vetted by trading platforms, can be used improperly to entice investors with the false promise of high returns in a new investment space. As described below, IEOs may be conducted in …

The United States Securities and Exchange Commission have argued in a Jan. 10 filing that Blockvest founder Reginald Buddy Ringgold III falsified and, in one case, forged signatures in documents critical to the case. The commission had previously charged Blockvest with falsely declaring that its initial coin offering (ICO) was registered with the regulator. A pre-ICO? In Oct. 2018, the SEC halted Blockvest’s ICO in an emergency court order. The project had nevertheless already collected more than $2.5 million in a pre-ICO sale of its BLV token. Though the Southern California court district initially claimed that the commission failed to …

Telegram will release bank records that the United States Securities Exchange Commission believes will prove misconduct in the latter’s $1.7 billion offering of Gram tokens. International privacy laws and the new information Per a Jan. 13 filing with the court of the Southern District of New York (SDNY), Telegram will have until Feb. 26 to provide the court with the bank records that the court denied the SEC in an earlier ruling that was based on privacy concerns. Today’s ruling will allow Telegram to redact the information provided to the court in accordance with foreign privacy regulations. According to a …