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A comment on SEC Charges Kik With Conducting $100M Unregistered ICO. Parent comment

Re:SEC Charges Kik With Conducting $100M Unregistered ICO by burtonator on Tuesday June 04, 2019 @03:15PM (#20098251)
This was my issue at the time too.. It was a horribly vague situation.

The SEC usually acts but the penalties are usually for 1/100th of the profits.

If Kik loses here they're just going to make them pay $1M 'penalty' and move on.

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Re:SEC Charges Kik With Conducting $100M Unregistered ICO by flyGuyOnTheSly on Tuesday June 04, 2019 @03:38PM (#20098482)
Not according to the page linked to on the SEC website:

>The SEC seeks a permanent injunction, disgorgement plus interest, and a penalty.

So they're seeking $55,000,000 USD of US investor funds, plus interest, plus a penalty.

That would bankrupt Kik and decimate the future of the project.

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Re:SEC Charges Kik With Conducting $100M Unregistered ICO by asdfasgasdgasdg on Tuesday June 04, 2019 @10:48PM (#20101089)
https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/kin/

People with skin in the game clearly think it's a big deal. Kin's price tanked by 25% today, and that's after a long decline since the Well's notice. That trading volume is telling too. They turned over about 10% of the outstanding shares. By comparison, a typical day for GOOGL is 0.5%.

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Re:SEC Charges Kik With Conducting $100M Unregistered ICO by Causality1 on Tuesday June 04, 2019 @06:53PM (#20100020)
That's...strange. If I make an illegal sale to one person for a thousand dollars I have to pay back every penny plus a penalty, but if I make an illegal sale to a thousand people for a hundred million dollars I only have to pay back one percent?
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Re:SEC Charges Kik With Conducting $100M Unregistered ICO by shawnz on Tuesday June 04, 2019 @04:35PM (#20098965)
Why should penalties necessarily bankrupt the company? Shouldn't the penalty be proportional to the damage they created by doing things improperly?
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Re:SEC Charges Kik With Conducting $100M Unregistered ICO by PierceJoy on Tuesday June 04, 2019 @05:02PM (#20099193)
There needs to be a punitive aspect as well. Simply taking away their profit doesn't discourage this in the future, as being caught isn't certain.

I'm not saying the company should be bankrupted, but it has to hurt them enough that they wouldn't want to risk trying again.

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Re:SEC Charges Kik With Conducting $100M Unregistered ICO by httpsterio on Tuesday June 04, 2019 @05:44PM (#20099571)
Hurt them enough so that nobody will try the same again, not just kik. But then again, bankrupting them isn't the wisest choice, if they pay enough taxes and their offences isn't too severe, it would be better to have them around employing people and paying taxes and wages vs it doesn't exist at all.
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Re:SEC Charges Kik With Conducting $100M Unregistered ICO by tw04 on Tuesday June 04, 2019 @06:05PM (#20099714)
If I have nothing and rob a bank, should I get get to keep half? Why should the penalty bankrupt me?
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Re:SEC Charges Kik With Conducting $100M Unregistered ICO by shawnz on Tuesday June 04, 2019 @06:14PM (#20099767)
No, that's a much different situation. Kik could have acted legally and still made a profit on this idea, although maybe less. In your example, clearly there is no "legal" way in which you could have robbed the bank
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Re:SEC Charges Kik With Conducting $100M Unregistered ICO by tw04 on Tuesday June 04, 2019 @08:01PM (#20100358)
In their own words they couldn't make a profit...

As for their being no legal way to rob a bank, there are a whole bunch of folks from the 2009 mortgage crises who would beg to differ.

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