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The Securities and Exchange Commission today announced charges against Douver Torres Braga, Joff Paradise, Keleionalani Akana Taylor, and Jonathan Tetreault for their roles in Trade Coin Club, a fraudulent crypto Ponzi scheme that raised more than 82,000 bitcoin, valued at $295 million at the time, from more than 100, 000 investors worldwide . According to the SEC’s complaint, filed in the United States District Court for the Western District of Washington, Braga created and controlled Trade Coin Club, a multi-level marketing program that operated from 2016 through 2018 and promised profits from the trading activities of a purported crypto asset trading bot. The SEC alleges that Braga and Paradise lured investors with false representations that the bot made “millions of microtransactions” every second, and that investors would receive minimum returns of 0.35 percent daily. However, instead of deploying investor funds for the purported trading bot, Braga allegedly siphoned off invest...

The Securities and Exchange Commission today announced charges against The Hydrogen Technology Corporation, its former CEO, Michael Ross Kane, and Tyler Ostern, the CEO of Moonwalkers Trading Limited, a self-described “market making” firm, for their roles in effectuating the unregistered offers and sales of crypto asset securities called “Hydro” and for perpetrating a scheme to manipulate the trading volume and price of those securities, which yielded more than $2 million for Hydrogen. The SEC’s complaint alleges that starting in January 2018, Kane and Hydrogen, a New York-based financial technology company, created its Hydro token and then publicly distributed the token through various methods:  an “airdrop,” which is essentially giving away Hydro to the public; bounty programs, which paid the token to individuals in exchange for promoting it; employee compensation; and direct sales on crypto asset trading platforms.  The complaint further alleges that, after distributing ...

The Securities and Exchange Commission today announced plans to add an Office of Crypto Assets and an Office of Industrial Applications and Services to the Division of Corporation Finance's Disclosure Review Program (DRP). The DRP has long had offices to review company filings by issuers. The two new offices will join the seven existing offices that provide focused review of issuer filings and that are grouped by industry expertise to further the Division’s work to promote capital formation and protect investors. The DRP anticipates the new offices will be established later this fall. "As a result of recent growth in the crypto asset and the life sciences industries, we saw a need to provide greater and more specialized support in the DRP's Office of Finance and its Office of Life Sciences," said Renee Jones, Director of the Division of Corporation Finance. "The creation of these new offices will enable the DRP to enhance its focus in the areas of crypto...