The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) said in a statement that American Cryptofed DAO LLC, a Wyoming-based cryptocurrency company, “filed a materially deficient and misleading” form when trying to register its tokens, known as “Ducat” and “Locke,” as stock securities.
The disclosures contained no relevant information about either the tokens or the actual company and contained materially misleading statements, the SEC said.
The SEC, the crypto-startup, among many other omissions, did not have information about the company’s business, management and financial conditions and also made misleading statements about whether the tokens were securities.
American Cryptofed CEO Marian Orr disagreed with the SEC’s view that the tokens were securities, arguing that the startup had tried to discuss the issue with the SEC when it failed to respond to the company’s rebuttal sent last month.
“The purported ‘deficiencies’ the SEC referred to were the lack of attributes inherent to securities. These are attributes that the two tokens (Locke and Ducat) of a decentralized blockchain-based CryptoFed DAO monetary system will never have, ” Orr said.
SEC Chair Gary Gensler appears to have a broader view of whether cryptocurrencies fall within the SEC’s jurisdiction, saying the SEC is investigating cryptocurrencies in various ways and describing the crypto world as a “Wild West” riddled with risk and fraud.