Featured Headlines

November 7, 2018 @ 9:02 pm By JD Alois  |  

RealtyShares, one of the more promising entrants in the once-hot real estate crowdfunding sector, is shutting down, according to several sources. A write up in the RealDeal from earlier today said the investment platform had been unable to raise additional growth capital as investors failed to… Read More

November 7, 2018 @ 7:01 pm By JD Alois  |  

Zopa, the UK’s largest consumer peer to peer lending platform, has closed on a £60 million funding round – its largest capital raise to date. This most recent funding round was partially announced back in August when Zopa reported it had raised £44 million. The new capital… Read More

November 7, 2018 @ 10:17 am By JD Alois  |  

Recently, at the StartEngine Summit during LA Blockchain Week, CI had the chance to sit down with prominent securities attorney Linda Lerner. Lerner is Senior Counsel at Crowell Moring and a veteran lawyer with deep experience and expertise in securities issuance and regulation of stock exchanges…. Read More

November 6, 2018 @ 6:00 am By JD Alois  |  

France is positioning itself as a jurisdiction of preference for initial coin offerings (ICOs) in Europe. The government is in the midst of finalizing legislation, under the PACTE Law,  that will regulate ICOs. While several other European countries have moved forward with specific legislation designed… Read More

November 5, 2018 @ 9:39 am By JD Alois  |  

Uniti, an electric car that was developed in Sweden, is planning to raise capital on Crowdcube as it expands into the United Kingdom. In 2016, Uniti sold equity on FundedByMe a valuation of €9.8 million. The following year, Uniti launched a self-crowdfunding campaign that received the backing… Read More

November 5, 2018 @ 8:02 am By JD Alois  |  

On Friday, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Division of Enforcement, issued their annual report updating on fiscal 2018 enforcement actions. According to the report, 2018 was a busy year as more than 821 enforcement actions occurred, representing a “diverse mix” of securities law transgressions…. Read More

November 4, 2018 @ 6:51 pm By JD Alois  |  

The StartEngine Summit entitled “Tokenizing the World” took place in Santa Monica during LA Blockchain week this October. StartEngine, one of the largest investment crowdfunding platforms in the US, focused most of the conference on the future of crypto and securities issued on the blockchain. As… Read More

November 3, 2018 @ 11:29 am By Xu Gao  |  

Hong Kong Monetary Authority Launches Blockchain-based Trade Finance Platform TradeConnect The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (hereinafter referred to as the HKMA) announced on October 31st that it had launched a blockchain-based trade finance platform TradeConnect, in order to facilitate cross-border trade and related research. TradeConnect… Read More

November 2, 2018 @ 6:56 pm By JD Alois  |  

In the 2019 budget speech by the Malaysia Minister of Finance, YB Tuan Lim Guan Eng, the government introduced capital market measures designed to reinforce the role of tech in driving the economy. Lim explained: “We need to create an environment for our human talent… Read More

November 1, 2018 @ 4:00 pm By JD Alois  |  

UK Unicorns Monzo, BrewDog & Revolut are Crowdcube Alumni UK’s largest investment crowdfunding platform by volume Crowdcube has now helped to raise capital for three separate unicorns aka firms that have attained a valuation of $ 1 billion or more. Crowdcube pointed to this fact… Read More

October 31, 2018 @ 3:31 pm By Collins Brown  |  

A lot of people think of their cryptocurrency wallet as merely a digitized version of a real wallet that is used for storing funds. However, it doesn’t actually store cryptocurrencies. Rather, it saves a pair of public and private keys that grant access to one’s digital belongings. In a nutshell, a public key is a… Read More

October 30, 2018 @ 12:00 pm By Samuel Guzik  |  

As a securities attorney, when I attend a conference in a rapidly developing area, I come with my own prejudices and beliefs, but with an open mind and open ears – to hear,  digest and discuss the latest developments and thinking.  The 2018 Crypto Invest… Read More

October 29, 2018 @ 6:23 pm By JD Alois  |  

In the wake of the Autumn Budget  delivered by Chancellor of the Exchequer Philipp Hammond today, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), Bank of England, and HM Treasury has published their final report on the topic of regulating cryptoassets and distributed ledger technology (DLT/blockchain). The Cryptoasset… Read More

October 28, 2018 @ 11:00 pm By JD Alois  |  

Last week during LA Blockchain Week, the Crypto Invest Summit took place at the Los Angeles Convention Center. This event followed a successful Spring event where over 4500 individuals registered but organizers struggled to handle the sudden rush to attend the event. The Fall CIS… Read More

October 27, 2018 @ 12:00 pm By Xu Gao  |  

Online Brokerage Futu Securities Reported to File with U.S. Regulators for IPO Bloomberg quoted people familiar with the matter that Chinese online brokerage Futu Securities had secretly submitted an IPO application in the US, and the fundraising scale could reach at least $300 million. Futu… Read More

October 26, 2018 @ 4:57 pm By JD Alois  |  

The much heralded JOBS Act was signed into law in 2012 during a brief moment of bi-partisan cooperation. The objective was to drive economic growth, and job creation, via a series of regulatory updates including the legalization of investment crowdfunding. But has the JOBS Act… Read More

October 26, 2018 @ 10:51 am By JD Alois  |  

There is drama today at leading Chinese peer to peer lending platform Dianrong. Dainrong was founded in 2012 by Soul Htite, a prominent Fintech executive who was the former CTO of Lending Club. In fact, the online lender has been described as the “LendingClub of China…. Read More

October 25, 2018 @ 2:54 pm By Ștefan Neagu  |  

Background checks are broken. They’re necessary, especially when verifying personnel for sensitive positions, but right now, the system is broken. It’s a really lucrative business if you’re a background check company, because the system is great at exploiting companies checking applicants and creating more work… Read More

October 24, 2018 @ 1:00 pm By Matthew Sullivan  |  

The crypto community is chomping at the bit for the SEC to approve an ETF for Bitcoin, and rightly so. For the uninitiated, an ETF (exchange traded fund) is a common investment vehicle, an index fund which tracks various stock market indexes and trades like… Read More

October 24, 2018 @ 8:55 am By JD Alois  |  

Neufund, a leading Germany-based Fintech startup and security token issuance platform, published an open letter to the German Bundestag today. The letter was in response to a recent court ruling in Germany that determined Bitcoin was not a financial instrument. The case centered around a… Read More