Most important events of November’s last week related to startups and ICOs: news, expert reviews, new projects in our Calendar and, of course, the Rating!
Key News
This week has passed under the name of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) - in addition to the obligation to register tokens as securities, the regulator has finally reached some celebrities who advertised ICO projects.
Take a look at the most interesting news of the current week:
Head of SEC Sheds Light on ICO Projects
The head SEC Jay Clayton explained the position of the regulator on the situation with two ICO projects - CarrierEQ Inc. (Airfox) and Paragon Coin Inc., which are required to register their tokes as securities, pay fines and return funds to investors. Clayton said that, despite the fact that bitcoin is not a security, many ICO tokens have their own characteristics, which means that tokens should either be offered to investors as part of a private placement or be registered, but these two projects didn’t follow such a procedure. The representative refrained from determining the time of announcing decisions on the projects but noted that many points that previously raised doubts of the regulator were clarified by the SEC.
ConsenSys Invests in Startup with Complete Ethereum Transactions Anonymity
ConsenSys Labs invested $2.1 million in AZTEC project. AZTEC, created by mathematician Tom Pocock and nuclear physicist Zachary Williamson, uses zero-proof evidence (also known as zk-SNARKs), a cryptographic protocol that is used to increase anonymity in blockchain and promoted by Zcash project. The startup claims that their protocol is "twice as efficient as other known technologies on the network." According to Pocock, the protocol is mainly focused on banks, and at the moment they are negotiating with 20 leading financial institutions, including the Global Top 10 Banks. The launch of the project for the first wave of users is scheduled for January 2019.
SEC Fines Celebrities for Advertising ICO
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) fined boxer Floyd Mayweather and musician DJ Khaled for promoting ICO project - Centra. Mayweather and Khaled didn’t report on the reward, which means that the promotion of ICO may look impartial, although in fact it was paid. The financial regulator believes that the athlete received $100,000 from Centra Tech and $200,000 from the Stox and Hubii Network, while the hip-hop artist gained $50,000, and now they will have to pay fines that far exceed these amounts. Mayweather will have to pay $300,000 for misappropriated funds, a fine of $300,000 and $14,775 as a percentage for the period before the decision is made. And DJ Khaled - unregistered funds in the amount of $50,000, a fine of $100,000 and a percentage of $2,725. In addition, in the next few years, they are prohibited from advertising any securities, including digital ones.
ICO Expert Review: SOAR
An honest and strict review of Soar project, the direct competitor of Google Maps, which creates a decentralized global map of the world built on blockchain technology.
Top of the Rating
iHodl.com has developed a unique rating system to judge ICO projects, which takes into account all aspects starting with the official website, up to the token platform itself. This time we matched the best past ICO projects according to our rating.
Top-5 Best Past ICOs
4.69 — Bitbon System
4.36 — Ubex
4.28 — Planport
4.26 — Tutellus
4.08 — PavoCoin
ICO Primer
Main texts by iHodl.com that everyone should read to study the ICO sphere:
ICO meme of the week
And here’s something uplifting for you! Every week we present an ICO meme, that depicts the main event from the ICO industry.
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