Texas Securities Board Fines Nui Crypto Mining Network $25,000 for Hash Rate Investment Fraud

The securities regulator of the state of Texas has recently announced that it has finally reached an agreement with the four crypto companies that the agency was accusing of being unregistered securities sellers. The regulator has posted some reports on Twitter today.

According to the official reports, the process took around nine months. It was first discovered in 2018, during the end of the Initial Coin Offering (ICO) craze, that these four companies were selling tokens that were considered to be securities without proper permission.

Nui Social, Mintage Mining, BC Holdings, Social Membership Network Holding and manager Darren Olayan agreed that they would not sell cryptos to investors now. They will all also pay an administrative fine of $25,000 USD for not complying with the law at first.

The Case

In July last year, the Texas State Securities Board has identified these businesses as selling tokens in an illegal way. After seeing this as a violation of the securities law, the agency decided to notify the companies and, later, to issue a cease and desist order for them.

However, it took these nine months for the process to be properly completed, as some of the companies decided to go to court in order to defend themselves.

The move was considered a victory of the department in its ongoing fight with illegal token sales. The U. S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is another important agency that works on this kind of case, but it works on a nationwide stance.

This month, the Texas State Securities Board was responsible for finding out another 16 companies which are suspected of being scams or at least to be acting illegally. These companies included a high-profile ponzi scheme known as BitConnect, which is at the center of a current FBI operation. None of them is properly registered to sell securities on Texas.

The @TxSSB enters order against sellers of crypto-mining-based investments to Texans. $25K fine is first U.S. state fine in such a case. Rescission offer to investors as well.https://t.co/yah1iM5vUH#cryptocurrency #cryptomining #mintagemining #nuisocial pic.twitter.com/QSJrRPlrMh

— Texas SSB (@TxSSB) February 21, 2019