SE Digital, a subsidiary of major financial services firm Seamico Securities, has been confirmed as the first initial coin offering (ICO) portal operator to be approved by Thailand’s securities regulator. According to an Oct. 11 report from The Bangkok Post, SE Digital plans to launch Thailand’s first investment token, with a target transaction size of 2-3 billion baht or roughly $65,800,000-$98,700,000. Moreover, Seamico Securities’ strategic investor, Elevated Returns, has reportedly applied to the Thai Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for a Digital Assets Exchange License to launch a new trading venue that would provide a secondary market for such tokens …

Security token offerings, or STOs, have more or less taken the mantle from their semi-defunct counterpart, the initial coin offering (ICO). Still, the extreme rise and subsequent fall of the ICO has left quite an impression on the cryptocurrency industry. At its peak prevalence in 2017, this novel fundraising prototype accumulated a total of $6.2 billion — but it wasn’t set to last. Come December of the same year, ICOs had become a shadow of their former selves, plummeting in demand. So far, a mere $366 million has been raised via ICOs in 2019, a retrace of 94% from their …

The United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has entered settlement talks with alleged fraudulent cryptocurrency firm Veritaseum. Initial conference adjourned After filing a complaint against Veritaseum CEO Reginald Middleton and his two companies in August 2019, the SEC said that it is engaged in settlement talks with the defendants, fintech publication FinanceFeeds reports on Oct. 9. According to the report, the regulator filed a motion to adjourn the initial conference at the New York Eastern District Court earlier in October. Following the motion, the court reportedly agreed to reschedule the conference for Nov. 14, 2019. $14.8 million raised through …

On Sept. 30, the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced that it had reached a civil settlement with EOS parent company Block.One following an investigation into violations of the SEC’s security offering regulations. The decision has sparked a new conversation around blockchain, and whether the sector’s apparent flaunting of regulations is brashness or simply the fact that in the worst of cases, the SEC’s teeth aren’t as sharp as initially assumed. On the surface, a $24 million settlement is a large and eye-popping number. However, the deal’s toughness begins to unravel when considering its broader context, as the …

It’s hard to tell who was the first to coin — if you’ll forgive the pun — the name for the dramatic price drop of Bitcoin (BTC) and altcoins as the “crypto winter.” But the name accurately captures the simultaneous collapse of around 2,000 global cryptocurrencies that lost a total of 80% of their aggregate market cap. The term “crypto winter” probably came into more widespread use after BTC’s price drifted south to around $3,000 per Bitcoin in December of 2018, it’s lowest price in more than a year. For the crypto industry, 2018 was a year of changes due …

The United States District Court for the Southern District of New York has ordered purported cryptocurrency company Longfin to pay a total of $6,755,848 million in penalties. Falsely obtained qualification for Regulation A+ offering On Sept. 30, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced that a New York federal court entered a default ruling against the fintech company for “fraudulent public offering and falsifying revenue from sham commodities transactions.” According to the SEC, Longfin and its CEO Venkata S. Meenavalli falsely obtained qualification for a Regulation A+ offering by claiming that the blockchain-powered firm was operating within the U.S. However, …

The United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has charged Jonathan C. Lucas, the founder of adult entertainment marketplace Fantasy Market, with orchestrating a fraudulent initial coin offering (ICO). According to the SEC complaint published on Sept. 23, Lucas received around $63,000 in cryptocurrency from more than 100 investors “through the fraudulent offer and sale of unregistered digital securities of Fantasy Market.” The document states: “As alleged in the complaint, Lucas made numerous materially false statements in a whitepaper and online to induce investors to participate in the ICO. Among other alleged misstatements, Lucas claimed that a "working-beta" version of …

Disclaimer: This report previously stated that Kik was only considering shutting down its app and has been updated following new information from Kik. The Canadian social media and messaging app company Kik is considering shutting down its popular Kik messaging app. 70 reported layoffs at Kin subsidiary In a Sept. 23 article, Israeli tech publication CTech Calcalistit cites two anonymous sources at Kik, claiming that the Canada-based firm is considering closing down its messaging app. A subsequent blog post by Kik CEO Ted Livingston confirmed the reports, stating that the firm will shut down the Kik app, reduce its staff …

As the world of finance continues adapting to contemporary innovations, it almost cannot help but drag other industries along for the ride — willingly or otherwise. Film is one such sector currently undergoing a quiet revolt, concocting a radical subversion to traditional models of financing. This is partly due to the emergence of distributed technologies such as blockchain, and it has led to a new concept: the tokenization of everything. In its purest form, tokenization is the act of adding liquidity to real-world assets. A good — if not exact — comparison is depicted in stocks and shares, which represent …

The United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has sued ICOBox and its founder Nikolay Evdokimov for conducting an illegal securities offering and for acting as unregistered brokers. SEC says ICOBox’s digital tokens are worthless In a press release on Sept. 18, the SEC claimed that ICOBox and Evdokimov sold the firm’s ICO tokens to more than 2,000 investors in an unregistered coin offering in 2017. The SEC goes on to say that the defendants claimed that the tokens would increase in value upon trading and that ICO token holders would be able to swap them at a discount for …

Authorities in the United States have arrested two individuals who allegedly threatened to destroy a startup crypto company if they were not paid millions of dollars in cryptocurrency. Extortion of crypto startup On Sept. 18, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York, together with the FBI, announced the arrest of Steven Nerayoff and Michael Hlady. Both individuals were charged with extortion of a cryptocurrency startup and have already made their initial appearance in federal court. Nerayoff, a lawyer himself, was purportedly hired to assist in a Seattle-based company’s initial coin offering (ICO) and brought in the …

The offices of Chinese initial coin offering (ICO) startup GXChain have reportedly been closed by the local police. On Sept. 11, Dovey Wan — founding partner of blockchain-based investment company Primitive Ventures — tweeted a photo of an office taped closed (presumably by Chinese police) and announced that GXChain “got clamped down by the Chinese police.” She also said that she believes the project to be notable and legitimate: “GXChain was a very hot ICO back in the days with ATH market cap over $600M (even now still holds $48M) and considered to be among the very few legit ICOs.” …