The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has not hesitated to conclude that crypto assets are securities subject to the Securities Act of 1933, but with BlockFi, the SEC went a step further and, for the first time with respect to a crypto lending platform, found...
Content By Christopher J. Hubbert
SEC Efforts to Modernize Beneficial Ownership Reporting Don’t Go Far Enough
Overlap in the Securities Act of 1934 The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) presides over two separate beneficial ownership reporting schemes under Sections 13 and 16 of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. Although both sections govern disclosure of beneficial...
SEC Staff Issues Report on GameStop and Other Meme Stocks
2021 was a year of unexpected—and sometimes baffling—events. In the midst of cascading economic failure caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and political turmoil, one cartoonishly-quirky episode swept the nation involving an unlikely main character: GameStop Corp (NYSE:...
Ohio Attorney General Files Complaint to Treat Google As Common Carrier And/Or Public Utility
Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost made the decision to face Google head-on with his office’s June 8, 2021 filing of a complaint for declaratory judgment to treat Google as a common carrier and/or public utility in the State of Ohio. This step is just the first of many...
Dogecoin Nears $50 Billion — Wow, Much Amaze!
An unlikely cryptocurrency is now worth almost 50 times what it was valued on January 1 of this year. According to the Dogecoin website, the digital currency is “favored by Shiba Inus worldwide.” Clearly, Dogecoin doesn’t take itself too seriously, so why does it have...
SEC Updates Accredited Investor Definition
Private companies seeking to raise capital by selling equity to investors must structure the raise so that it is not considered a public offering under the Securities Act of 1933 unless they are prepared to undergo the cost and expense of an IPO. The most commonly...
New SEC Cyber Unit Files First Charges, and Cryptocurrency Company is the Target
Earlier this week, the Securities and Exchange Commission’s new Cyber Unit filed charges in its very first cyber fraud case, and its target was PlexCoin, a cryptocurrency startup based on the app platform Ethereum, and the company's founder, Dominic Lacroix. PlexCoin...
SEC Issues Warning To Celebrities Touting Initial Coin Offerings
Bitcoin has been in the news recently for its meteoric rise in value this year, achieving an all-time high of more than $7,500 even after China outlawed initial coin offerings, or ICOs, in September. An ICO is a crowdfunding tool in which a newly-issued cryptocurrency...