Biggest Crypto Coin Sale Fueled by ‘Pump’ Scheme, Research Says
Bullish crypto exchange bankrolled by Block.one funds, discussed in newly published paper
It would become the biggest digital token sale on record. Over 11 months in 2017 and 2018, a little known software maker named Block.one held an initial coin offering for a new cryptocurrency, raising more than $4 billion. Backed by billionaire heavyweights including PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel, hedge fund magnates Alan Howard and Louis Bacon, and German entrepreneur Christian Angermayer, Block.one said it would use the money to build tools that would speed adoption of blockchain technology.
The newly minted currency, EOS, soon became mired in controversy.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission fined Block.one $24 million in 2019 for failing to register the ICO, and token holders sued Block.one last year, calling the sale a “fraudulent scheme” and alleging that the company violated securities laws by making “false and misleading statements about EOS, which artificially inflated the prices for the EOS securities and damaged unsuspecting investors.” And some programmers and digital asset managers have said that the company for years showed scant progress toward its mission.
Newly published research by forensic financial analysis firm Integra FEC, led by University of Texas at Austin McCombs School of Business finance professor John Griffin, raises fresh concerns about the EOS initial coin sale. Griffin, in interviews and a 14-page paper posted to the Integra website Tuesday, highlights a pattern of what he says are suspicious trades during the ICO. The transactions, between potentially connected associates, “pumped up” the price of EOS and induced unwitting investors to buy the currency, he alleges in the paper.