Something interesting happened over the weekend, as the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) ordered Airfox and Paragon to repay all investors from the AirToken ICO. Normally, this sort of news would cause the price of a crypto to tank immediately, but the opposite happened. AirToken instead mooned from $0.01 to $0.08 in an incredible price rally – presumably due to people trying to get into the coin to get a refund from Airfox and Paragon. In the time since, the price has again begun to drop back down to earth – unluckily for everyone trying to make a quick buck or two.
Violating SEC Rules
Airfox and Paragon both failed to register the ICO with the SEC, which unfortunately is against the SEC rules and means it has had to clamp down on the project. The ICO funds were raised to build a smartphone application that allowed users in third world countries to earn tokens by interacting with ads.
AirToken raised more than $15 million in its ICO, and all of that needs to now be repaid to investors. If the companies behind the project had actually registered the ICO with the SEC, there would be no problem and the project would be able to continue on its merry way.
SEC Clamping Down on Scammers
EtherDelta and its founder Zachary Coburn have been slapped with a huge $388,000 fine for operating an unregulated crypto exchange by the SEC. With this being another case of the agency cracking down on scammers and people breaking the law.
The SEC is taking crypto crimes very seriously, and is weeding out the scammers to help make the industry safer. In fact, Jared Polis – Governor of Colorado – has only been in office a number of days and the Colorado Division of Securities has clamped down on scam ICOs in the state by issuing multiple cease and desist orders.
CFTC Joining in the Culling of Scammers
The US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) is also joining the SEC on its quest to remove all illegal operators from the American crypto industry. Last week, the CFTC hit Joseph Kim – an American crypto trader – with a $1.1 million fine and a 15-month prison sentence for defrauding his employer and clients. In the past, the CFTC has gone after fraudulent crypto hedge funds in a bid to remove the pond scum from the crypto trading world and make is safer for everyone involved.
By directly removing these scammers and frauds from the industry, the SEC is helping itself with the issue of price manipulation in the market. This means that it could be close to finally approving a Bitcoin ETF – or at least that’s what we hope. While AirToken had a promising life ahead of it, it’s been cut short due to poor leadership and some fairly shoddy oversights.
