Bitcoin Forum

SEC Charges 2 Firms and 4 Individuals in Crypto Pump-and-Dump Scheme
source: https://news.bitcoin.com/sec-charges-2-firms-and-4-individuals-in-crypto-pump-and-dump-scheme/ (https://news.bitcoin.com/sec-charges-2-firms-and-4-individuals-in-crypto-pump-and-dump-scheme/)

They falsely claimed that “the company intended to back each DIG token issued and sold to investors with $1.00 worth of this gold, and that independent accounting firms had performed an ‘audit’ of the gold and verified its existence.”

This allowed them to sell at least $36.8 million of the crypto token, including to U.S. investors, “at prices fraudulently inflated by the public misstatements about the supposed gold acquisition,” the SEC detailed.

If they are found guilty, they should be made to face the law to serve as an example to people who are doing same to stop, and others who are considering starting, not to start. A lot of persons are usually victims of these pump and dump schemes and they deserve justice. It is a good thing that there is an authority checkmating their activities.

It's going to be a difficult process to assume crypto could continue the way it used to, we should realize that it's not going to be similar anymore and it is going to have some hard time for sure. I believe that the best thing to do would be making sure that what we did back in the day is still okay with the law.

Pump and Dump was something I never participated or initiated before, but I know for a fact that it was done in the crypto world a lot, and now that SEC is involved with crypto a lot, if you do that then it's illegal and you would be caught like this. So people should be extra careful, and it's good that pump and dumps are prohibited, they were bad anyway.

Imagine if this is 2017 then they'd go after a lot of entities because that is when most of these Pump and Dump scammers prospered. Good thing that the SEC is now actively going after such scammers because if not, a lot would surely be burned just like what happened in countless other cryptos, most recently which is LUNA. I've been with some pump and dump groups before and you never really profited from it unless you're one of the early guys on the group. It's something that I somewhat despise of til now and something that I regretted doing because it leaves a lot of people in the ground.

Speaking of SEC and charges, Kim Kardashian is also charged by them with a fine of $1.26M.

Kim Kardashian pays $1.26m over crypto 'pump and dump' (https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-63116235)

Good thing that SEC is on it so that celebrity endorsers will be forced to take a research first before they advertise a project. But what I'm thinking is that, this amount could just be half or a portion of what Kim received from that project.

These victim of pump and dump scheme are not forced.  They buy the token in their own accord.  Though I don't feel sorry for these investors, I agree that the people who organized massive pump and dump scheme should be punished because they are misleading people in investing money to their lies and deceit.

Saw that news right now and it’s good that SEC is already working, if they did this on the early crypto adoption I’m sure they can sue more people and get more money as well. That maybe small but at least SEC is able to make them pay and hopefully will use that money to compensate the victims of s fraudulent project. This is another SEC issues, I wish they work more on this on every country so the investors can have more peace of mind with cryptocurrency.

Sometimes I also think is it necessary that every digital gold developed by a crypto company should be backed by gold reserves?
This is the same with USDT. If Tether does not have USD reserves equivalent to USDT, and can function normally as a crypto company providing stable value services, then the digital gold company does not have to have real gold reserves either.

AFAIK, they have been actively doing this even on  2017 ICO craze. They have been chasing those promoters that had misled a lot of investors which had included Mayweather and other known personalities.

And it is unlikely they won't stop it because big sums of money were involved. It is like they are tracing back those projects and the promoters that have been involved on it.

While I am always wary of government intervention, I am also worried with a lot of scamming schemes happening in the crypto space. Obviously a lot of people are taking advantage of many people's interest with cryptocurrency so they made up projects and claim a lot of misleading statements to hype up their projects. These people should go to jail and must be fined millions so as to give a big warning to scammers that the hand of law will one day get them...and they will suffer the consequences of their wrongdoings.

While I would like for the justice system to get to every single scammer that has ever stole money from people with those schemes I understand that this is something possible to do, but at least if possible I would like for the authorities to begin to arrest the people that are deceiving newbies with those schemes in the market right now, that way scammers will know that they can no longer do whatever they want in this market and that if they do something bad then they are going to end up in jail.

Why they are only after popular people, they must also check some small-medium celebrities or personalities that are doing pump and dump schemes and getting paid by scam projects.
There are also a lot of influencers doing this on the different social media platforms, especially on Youtube with a bunch of channels there are promoting pump and dump projects.

Sounds pretty good to me imo. A lot of celebrities that dabbled into crypto have often used their popularity to push some projects into the heavens only to kick them after they're done with them. I'd also blame the parties involved for believing them but that's another thing, influencers doing these pump-and-dump schemes are intentionally baiting these people into believing them after all, so a huge part of the blame falls to them. I don't know what the difference is between the start of the craze to the current state right now though, is it worse or better now?

You do that at your own risk. Terra Luna tried that and now Do Kwon is wanted in 195 countries & South Korea.

I suppose the most simple explanation is the SEC does not have the resources to investigate every single scam out there and they prefer to concentrate on the bigger cases, this leaves those influencers out of any problem at the moment, but since their actions are public and there are blockchain records of those transaction there is no guarantee the SEC will not go against them once they have enough personal and budget to go against those promoting scam projects.

SEC is not small so I believe they have the power to make an investigation for all types of cases whether big or small but what they are doing now is also great. They need to catch those big fish first because they are the ones who dealt a lot of damage but small scale scams should also be caught out before they scam more people. If the celebrity or influencer is involved then they are not hard to find because their identities are already exposed in public.

I think they are too desperate enough to earn huge money because they are able to risk their reputation but they have made a wrong decision there. Once they are in jail, they still can't enjoy the money that they obtain.