The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) fined Tierion $ 250,000 for conducting an unregistered ICO in 2017, during which it raised $ 25 million.
According to the SEC, the initial public offering of tokens organized by Tierion violated US securities laws. Tierion is a blockchain-based development firm, and during the ICO positioned the TNT token as a means of payment between users of its network. According to the agency, Tierion has sold 350 million TNT to 4,800 investors. The SEC ruled that investors and holders of TNT tokens who traded them at a loss can, within 60 days, demand compensation from Tierion along with interest.
The department decided to stop trading TNT, which were created according to the ERC-20 standard and worked on the Ethereum blockchain. The Commission also said TNT was not in compliance with Regulation D. Tierion’s management did not acknowledge or contest the charges and agreed to pay the regulator a $ 250,000 fine. Tierion CEO and founder Wayne Vaughn said he would continue to work on the company’s current products. even without TNT tokens.
According to him, the SEC decision “removed the heavy regulatory burden from him.” Vaughn added that this situation will not affect the availability of the open source software that the developers of the firm have been working on. In 2017, Tierion partnered with Microsoft to develop a decentralized identity system that will create and validate data using distributed ledger technology (DLT).
This week, the SEC fined cryptocurrency startup ShipChain $ 2,050,000 for the same reason. Since the beginning of the year, the Commission has collected more than $ 4.68 billion in fines and confiscated illegal proceeds, a record amount in the entire history of the agency.
