As the cryptocurrency and blockchain industry is early on, and there aren’t many regulations and rules to keep companies in check, many scams and startups looking to take advantage of this lack of regulation have appeared over the years.
This latest one is the Blockchain of Things Inc. company or BCOT, which apparently held an unregistered initial coin offering or ICO, regarding its digital assets, according to an official press release from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
An excerpt from the post:
“According to the SEC’s order, New York-based startup BCOT conducted the ICO starting in December 2017 after the Commission had warned in its DAO Report of Investigation that ICOs can be securities offerings. BCOT raised nearly $13 million to develop and implement its business plans, including developing its blockchain-based technology and platform.”
The goal of BCOT was to ensure that clients such as developers to be able to generate their own cryptocurrencies to use and transfer around. However, the platform’s ICO was not registered as it should have been with the SEC regulatory rules.
Speaking on the matter was one Carolyn M. Welshhans, the Associate Director of the Division of Enforcement at the SEC:
“BCOT did not provide ICO investors with the information they were entitled to receive in connection with a securities offering. We will continue to consider appropriate remedies, such as those in today’s order, to provide investors with compensation and required information and to provide companies who conducted unregistered offerings with an opportunity to move forward in compliance with the federal securities laws.”
