Beyond Ripple, these are some other victims of the SEC’s hammer
Ripple Inc. has undoubtedly garnered all the attention in the last few days. The previous third-largest cryptocurrency in the world, behind Bitcoin and Ethereum, was hit with a lawsuit from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The U.S. watchdog claims that Ripple and its executives sold unlicensed securities to investors.
But beyond Ripple, the SEC had gone after other players that it considered out of place. Here’s a quick rundown of some of those affected in the last two years.
Block.One
In 2019, the Commission accused Block.One of the selling unregistered securities – the same charge that Ripple is being hit with. Block.One is the creator of EOS. Both parties reached a settlement of 0.58% of the sum raised during the ICO in 2017 ($24 million).
1/ The SEC announced a $24 million fine against Block One, the creators of the EOS blockchain, because its initial coin offering was an unregistered securities offering. But there's a twist. https://t.co/3OKUCa0Gy6
— Not-Dr. Kevin Werbach (@kwerb) October 1, 2019
Although Block.One did not admit to or deny the accusation, it agreed to pay the fine.
Telegram TON
After a few years of drama with the SEC, Telegram’s much anticipated crypto also went under. This year, founder and CEO, Pavel Durov announced on his channel that “Telegram’s active involvement with TON is over.”
A year ago, the SEC ordered the social media giant to stop the sales of its cryptocurrency called Gram. According to the SEC, Telegram failed to register an early sale of $1.7 billion prior to the network launch.
John MCAfee
John McAfee has been quite popular in the crypto space, particularly shilling ICOs on Twitter. Well, on October 5, the SEC charged him for shilling ICOs for several years. Data from SEC suggests that McAfee got more than $23.1 million from recommending ICOs on his Twitter page. He has been charged with evading taxes and is currently waiting for a court decision to extradite him to the U.S. or not.
Kik
In October 2020, Kik was ordered to pay a $5 million penalty as a settlement for a lawsuit initiated by the SEC in 2019. Surprisingly, the Commission acknowledged that Kik’s native toke, KIN, was a non-security asset.
Drawing from previous crypto battles with the SEC, it is possible that Ripple’s case could end in a settlement and some reshuffling of the functionality of XRP.
