SEC Orders Tierion To Pay Back Investors For The $25M ICO

SEC orders Tierion to pay back the investors in the TNT tokens after finding that the data verification startup $25 million initial coin offering violated the securities laws as we are about to read more about in the latest altcoin news.

TNT holders and ICO investors that sold their tokens at a loss now have 60 days to ask Tierion for what is essentially a refund plus the interest. The node operators can sell their compensatory TNT back to Tierion for 0.1 cents plus the interest after the SEC orders Tierion to pay the investors back.

Tierion has to disable trading of its ERC20 token which runs on the ETH blockchain under the settlement that was disclosed on Wednesday. It will pay the SEC $250,000 in penalties but the company didn’t admit any wrongdoing according to the SEC. The regulator also issued Tierion a Reg D waiver which means that it won’t have to register future private placements of securities because they were nice enough to cooperate.

The order blows up 1 billion tokens but at the time in 2017 during the ICO, Tierion pitched them as the “method of settlement” between users of its data verification network, and the Chainpoint protocol as an incentive to secure the network. The order said Tierion sold 350 million TNT to about 4800 investors. But Tierion aims to continue without TNT. The founder Wayne Vaughn said that the settlement allows Tierion “to move forward without a heavy regulatory burden.” He also framed TNT’s demise as the token going into retirement. The platform said in a blog post:

 “This announcement does not impact the availability of Tierion’s current products or open-source software.”

Tierion has reached a settlement and received a waiver from the SEC in connection with the Company's sale of the TNT token in July 2017. https://t.co/c16ZSz47tZ

— Tierion (@Tierion) December 23, 2020

Regarding the Securities and Exchange Commission, Jay Clayton, the Securities and exchange commission chairman submitted his letter of resignation to President Donald Trump after serving in this role for three and a half years. Under Clayton’s rules, the SEC chased a few high-profile crypto projects which it alleged that they held unregistered securities offering. The SEC mounted its biggest offense yet yesterday when it filed the lawsuit against Ripple Labs for allegedly raising $1.3 billion in unregistered securities sales since 2013. Right after the lawsuit, the price of the coin dropped.