apparently preventing fraud is “anti-crypto”.

according to this Fortune headline, the SEC going after fraud and deceptive business practices after a company publicly announced they were going to breach a previous agreement with the agency is an “anti-crypto campaign”

According to the Wells Notice, viewed by Fortune, the SEC plans to formally accuse Unicoin of violations related to fraud, deceptive practices, and the offering and sale of unregistered securities, although the letter did not specify the exact violations.

Still, because of its novel approach, Konanykhin toldFortunethat the company has been subject to several SEC investigations, though the latest is the first to result in a Wells Notice. He said that the company had entered into a so-called standstill agreement with the SEC earlier this year not to conduct an ICO or go public, but Konanykhin said he decided to breach the agreement after Trump won the recent election. Unicoin had previously filed paperwork with the agency announcing its intent to go public through a reverse merger.

This is particularly hilarious given that Fortune has skewered Gary Gensler for failing to go after the FTX, Celsius, and Terra frauds.

Gary Gensler blew it again. After his agency failed to warn investors about Terra and Celsius—whose collapses this spring sparked a trillion-dollar investor wipeout—the Securities and Exchange Commission chair allowed an even bigger debacle to unfold right under his nose. I’m talking, of course, about the revelation this week that the $30 billion FTX empire was a house of cards and that its golden boy founder, Sam Bankman-Fried, is the crypto equivalent of Theranos’s Elizabeth Holmes.

Schrödinger’s regulator can’t go after fraud before the company collapses, but if it collapses and the SEC didn’t warn us, they failed.

Note published on December 22, 2024 at 11:13 PM UTC