- Sparkster and Daya to pay $30 million with $500 K and $250 K as civil penalties.
- The SEC claims over this point bring Ethereum (ETH) under its jurisdiction.
United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) recently filed a lawsuit against Ian Balina specifying the ETH functionality. Ian, a crypto investor based in Texas is accused of promoting and offering SPRK tokens. Sparkster, Ltd. conducted the ICO of SPRK between April to July 2018, which the SEC claims to be against the law as SPRK is a relatively unregistered token.
SEC Tweet:
We issued a cease-and-desist order against Sparkster Ltd. and CEO, Sajjad Daya, for the unregistered offer and sale of crypto asset securities, and charged crypto influencer Ian Balina for failing to disclose compensation he received from Sparkster for promoting its tokens.
— U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (@SECGov) September 19, 2022
SEC has issued a cease and desist order over Sparkster firm and its CEO, Sajjad Daya. It also instructed Sparkster and Daya to pay $30 million with $500 K and $250 K as civil penalties, respectively. Furthermore, Daya is restrained from participating in any crypto offering for five years.
SEC’s Claim for Centralization
The whole cryptomarket has turned its focus to this case specifically over a single subdivision charged by the SEC in the complaint.
The point elaborates on SEC’s logic of maximum functionality of a platform brings in particular geography will bring the platform under that specific jurisdiction. Now the fear is that the SEC claim over this point brings Ethereum (ETH) under its jurisdiction and will make the PoS network a centralized platform.
Lark Davis Tweet:
Holy crap! SEC trying to claim jurisdiction over all #ethereum transactions since about 45% of the nodes are in the USA. Thus all transactions globally should be considered of US origin! YIKES!!! Scary precedent.
— Lark Davis (@TheCryptoLark) September 19, 2022
Lark Davis, a prominent crypto investor, and influencer regard this claim as a scary one. This point put forward just shows the SEC’s attempt to bring every other crypto transaction under its roof. Since 45% of the ETH nodes operate in the US and the major share of BTC miners are also functioning in the US provinces.
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