This past week, two companies within the token ecosystem announced settlements with the SEC. The SEC has been pursuing enforcement action for the past couple of years in wake of the ICO boom and bust of 2017. Neither of the companies who settled admitted fault, but both have paid fines. Block.one (EOS creator) paid $24M on its unregistered $4B offering while Nebulous (SIA creator) paid $225K on its unregistered $120K offering. Nebulous also has a utility token offering; interestingly, the SEC agreed not to take action on that token, which seems to allow for a dual token structure going forward. Block.one’s relatively small fine given its massive raise, in my view, is not too dissimilar from the small fines that tech giants Facebook, Google and others have paid due to privacy violations. While regulation is certainly here for crypto, the SEC appears to be making good on its claim that it wants to support innovation while holding companies to current laws.

Meanwhile, Libra, the cryptocurrency announced by Facebook back in June, is facing a tumultuous start. Regulators from France and Germany have vowed to block Libra’s use in Europe due to concerns relating to financial stability, money laundering and consumer risk. Both governments asserted that no private entity should claim monetary power.

In the face of this setback, the Libra Association contends that they will be “firmly maintaining (their) launch schedule” for the second half of 2020. They emphasized that the stablecoin will be backed by fiat reserves from a (Read more...)