SEC obtains emergency order against Titanium (BAR) ICO

in #bitcoin6 years ago (edited)

Wow this is pretty damning stuff in the SEC case against the Titanium (BAR) project. The SEC case alleges Titanium Blockchain Infrastructure Services, Inc. and in particular its activities around their ICO as "investment fraud."

Here's the title page detailing the case:

Screenshot 2018-05-29 22.33.06.png

One particularly interesting charge is the one on misleading claims of "purported" or "would be" customers of services offered by Titanium. The use of logos from many household/bluechip companies would make you think that there may well be deals or partnership with those companies already.

Screenshot 2018-05-29 22.32.32.png

ICO Hack

What's also interesting is that the team reportedly suffered a hack back in February which was supposed to have resulted in the loss of 16 million BAR tokens. This necessitated the forking of the token to create a TBAR token instead. TBAR token price has since taken a major dive just as everything else seems to be bouncing off the lows today.

Screenshot 2018-05-29 22.46.28.png

Full details of case

You can read the full details of the case yourself in the SEC filing.

What do you think?

What do you think of this? There's been a few scammy ICOs of late with a number of ICO exit scams pulled off. Recent ICO project hacks like that of the Smart Taylor project will undoubtedly spook investors, so will this latest SEC action.

The SEC also shut down the AriseBank ICO a few months ago in January.

The SEC said they were going after ICOs a while ago, seems that they are really beginning to get going. Is this just to be the thin end of the wedge as far as enforcement action is concerned - only time will tell.

Don't be surprised to see more similar cases against other ICOs soon.

Take care out there investing in ICOs.

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