On August 28, 2017, the SEC issued an alert warning investors to be wary of public companies claiming involvement with ICOs because they may be trying to exploit excitement around digital-token technology in order to fraudulently manipulate their stock price. While acknowledging that ICOs "may provide fair and lawful investment opportunities," the alert cautioned that "there may be situations in which companies are publicly announcing ICO or coin/token related events to affect the price of the company's common stock."
This latest investor warning comes a month after the Commission first issued formal guidance on ICOs, which we wrote about here, and only weeks after the SEC temporarily halted trading in First Bitcoin Capital Corp. and CIAO Group, the latter of which we discussed here. In all, since just April of this year, the SEC has issued four trading suspensions in the common stock of issuers - Strategic Global and Sunshine Capital, in addition to the companies noted above - that the SEC enforcement staff has concluded made dubious claims regarding their involvement with ICOs.
The SEC is expected to continue to assert itself in the nascent market for digital coin offerings, both to monitor and, where applicable, regulate legitimate offerings, as well as to deter bad actors looking to fraudulently exploit the new technology.
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