The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is expanding its efforts to reign in dubious initial coin offerings.

The Wall Street Journal reported today that the commission has issued dozens of subpoenas and information requests to technology companies and advisers involved in the market.

The SEC first took a public stance on ICOs back in July, when it ruled that ICOs tied to securities in a given company are subject to securities law just as any share or equity offering would be. Since that time, the commission has acted against a number of ICOs, including an emergency asset freeze to halt trading by PlexCoin Dec. 5 and a court order Jan. 30 shutting down a dubious ICO from a company called AriseBank that had already managed to raise $600 million.

The new action, described by “sources familiar with the matter” as a “wave of subpoenas” against companies seeking to raise funds, including “demands for information about the structure for sales and pre-sales of the ICOs, which aren’t bound by the same rigorous rules that govern public offerings.”

Discussing ICOs before a Senate hearing on Feb. 7, SEC chairman Jay Clayton made the commission’s stance very clear: “Many ICOs are being conducted illegally…their promoters and other participants are not following our security laws,” he said. “Some people say that’s because the law isn’t clear. I do not buy that for a moment. “Those who engage in semantic gymnastics or elaborate structuring exercises in an effort to avoid having a coin be a security are squarely in the crosshairs of our enforcement provision.”

Although the pace of ICOs started to slow toward the end of 2017, there are still many being launched almost daily. The largest ICO in history took place earlier this month when secure messaging app Telegram raised a breathtaking $850 million in presales as part of a $2 billion coin offering scheduled to be completed in March.

Picture: Pixabay