The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has launched an investigation in order to find out whether Binance's BNB token was a security at the time of its ICO in 2017, Bloomberg has reported citing sources.
The Binance Coin (BNB) launch took place in July 2017. Initially, the asset was an ERC-20 token. However, it was migrated to its own blockchain in April 2019.
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During the sale of the token, 100 million BNB were sold at a price of $0.15. Of the total issue of 200 million tokens, 10% was received by angel investors and 40% was reserved for the project's team of founders.
The project's white paper does not set any limit for participants in the sale of tokens.
Bloomberg has reported the SEC is aware of at least one US citizen who purchased BNB in the original sale. This allows the regulator to establish jurisdiction to review ICOs for potential violations of US securities laws.