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Bitcoin The Almighty Buck

Floyd Mayweather, DJ Khaled Charged For Illegally Touting Crypto Offerings (theverge.com) 89

The Securities and Exchange Commission is charging DJ Khaled and professional boxer Floyd Mayweather Jr for failing to disclose that they were paid promotional fees to tout fraudulent initial coin offerings. The Verge reports: According to the SEC, this is the first time that individuals have faced charges involving ICOs. The Commission is accusing Mayweather of failing to disclose a $100,000 promotional payment and DJ Khaled with a $50,000 one. Both celebrities received these promotional fees from Centra Tech, Inc. earlier this year. Neither Mayweather nor Khaled have admitted to or denied the Commission's findings, but both have agreed to pay back what they had received to promote the ICO and are facing hundreds of thousands of dollars in additional penalties each. "These cases highlight the importance of full disclosure to investors," said SEC Enforcement Division co-director Stephanie Avakian. "With no disclosure about the payments, Mayweather and Khaled's ICO promotions may have appeared to be unbiased, rather than paid endorsements."
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Floyd Mayweather, DJ Khaled Charged For Illegally Touting Crypto Offerings

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  • fraud (Score:5, Insightful)

    by phantomfive ( 622387 ) on Thursday November 29, 2018 @09:38PM (#57723532) Journal
    I agree with disclosure, but if anyone bought cryptocoin because of advice they got from Floyd Mayweather, they are going to be parted with their money sooner or later. I don't know what is wrong with America that allows this kind of advertising strategy to work, but it might very well be the central problem in America at the moment.
    • Re:fraud (Score:5, Funny)

      by h33t l4x0r ( 4107715 ) on Thursday November 29, 2018 @09:53PM (#57723594)
      So Mayweather isn't qualified to give investment advice just because he can't read and gets punched in the head for a living?

      That's a rather elitist attitude.
      • Re: fraud (Score:3, Funny)

        by phantomfive ( 622387 )
        Yeah you're right. I'm sorry, I let my privilege show.
      • Except that, you're both the elitist telling people how it works, and the dunce that isn't qualified to give the advice.

        Mayweather isn't qualified because he didn't file paperwork to become registered. Nobody cares if you get punched in the head, for a living or as a hobby. Lots of MMA fighters have day jobs in an office, presumably boxers too.

    • by Anonymous Coward

      Answer: A decades long trend that de-emphasized critical thinking skills, hence the rise in gullibility. See also: cable news, AM radio and Infowars.

      Next question please.

    • by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Stupidity, vast overestimation of your own skills ans insight and greed are not an US problem only. But since the US seems to be fracturing, with less and less cohesion of society, it may be especially bad there at the moment.

      You are right that this is probably one of the central problems of the human race though. If you lump religion and xenophobia in with stupidity (I do), it certainly is the central problem.

    • If you figure it out, let us know. I think we can probably generalize the root causes to the general mammalian population.

    • I agree with disclosure, but if anyone bought cryptocoin because of advice they got from Floyd Mayweather, they are going to be parted with their money sooner or later. I don't know what is wrong with America that allows this kind of advertising strategy to work, but it might very well be the central problem in America at the moment.

      ^this, I always wonder what sort of fucked up retard you have to be in order to make investments or purchase stuff based on a celebrity endorsement. Realistically someone somewhere is going to scam them out of there money sooner or later. But I guess protecting the mentally challenged is something as a society we do have to do, just hard to fathom how many there are.

    • by dcw3 ( 649211 )

      I'm certain it was all the other celebrities pumping "BUY GOLD" that complained. More seriously, doesn't the SEC have better things to do than go after a tiny $100k endorsement? I'm no fan of either of these guys, but I highly doubt that they were aware they (or their staff) were doing anything wrong. I'm sure someone wants to "set an example", or figures they're going to get promoted for taking down these bad guys.

      • Hey there Dilly Bar! Did it cross your little mind that they might be trying to regulate the use of cryptocoins as securities and that that industry is larger than $100K? Or did you fail to notice that the SEC is also going after the coin itself as being fraudulent?

        You're one of these dummies who wants people to think you actually believe that the SEC was going after Floyd Mayweather for being a celebrity? As if they were investigating him personally. When obviously, they were investigating a fraudulent ICO

        • by dcw3 ( 649211 )

          Hey there Brain Fart. Did you actually read what I wrote, or are you that fucking stupid that you can't tell I said nothing about them going after the crypto-cons. Sheesh. Get a life and stop trolling peoples posts.

          • Right. You didn't talk about cryptocoins. The story is about that.

            See this page of comments? Did you ever wonder why the comments come in pages? Did you ever wonder why they have different words at the top?

            • by dcw3 ( 649211 )

              Wow you are really bad at trolling aren't you. My response is to the OP and the title of the article, which in spite of your lack of literacy is about the individuals. Get a life.

    • I don't know what is wrong with America that allows this kind of advertising strategy to work, but it might very well be the central problem in America at the moment.

      It's a terrible education system that doesn't teach critical thinking, because its primary purpose is to produce low-information voters.

      • I don't know what is wrong with America that allows this kind of advertising strategy to work, but it might very well be the central problem in America at the moment.

        It's a terrible education system that doesn't teach critical thinking, because its primary purpose is to produce low-information voters.

        If you thought that was a primary purpose you really underestimated the need for child care in this country. Or the need for factory workers to (finally, please) learn how to read weights and measures.

    • I bought into this shitcoin, substantially because I thought Floyd Mayweather had a PhD in economics.

      No, wait, nobody ever thought such a thing - this was obviously just an advertising gimmick to get the brand out in front of as many eyeballs as possible.

      A reasonable judge would tell the plaintiffs, "get the hell out of my courtroom."

      Anybody who invested based off Mayweather or Kalid's endorsement without doing any due diligence, is just as likely to lose everything in the lottery next week. Obvious adver

      • He's a rich guy. People assume he paid a financial adviser whose clients are normally rich guys. That would be somebody good, right?

        Why would some middle-class nincompoop presume that he could go hire a budget financial adviser and get better advice than he'd get if he could listen in on the advice a rich guy got?

        There is not actually any good reason other than fraud not to put Mayweather's advice above the other low-quality investment advice people can get without taking the time to actually understand the

  • Make $XXm, get fined $XXk. Seems like a good deal to me.

    • They've been ordered to pay back the money they were paid, with interest, in addition to the fines.

      • by rtb61 ( 674572 )

        If the deal goes belly up and the hide being paid, they should be made liable for losses, just like a partnership, they keep going through all their money, as they bankrupt each, more debt accumulates the last players, until all the losses have been made up. No paybacks, no fines, first priority, make good the losses of the people scammed, once that is done and if they are not bankrupt yet, then fine them, basically their debt should be unlimited right up to bankruptcy, until losses are made good, no that w

  • by bobstreo ( 1320787 ) on Thursday November 29, 2018 @10:12PM (#57723676)

    Instead, I chose to go with my Nigerian Prince Crypto-Currancy blockchain based on the email notification of the inheritance of 20 Million Naira. /s

  • by gweihir ( 88907 ) on Thursday November 29, 2018 @10:16PM (#57723684)

    But they are few and far in between and even those are decidedly high-risk. The basic problem is that in a business-context, the blockchain does not solve a new problem, but a solved one. It does it with a bit different characteristics, but so far it seems not really that much better. Take, for example, a bank-to-bank money transfer. This is today either done via an intermediate exchange or based on a direct agreement between the two banks. The exchange charges something (not a lot, a transfer of unlimited amount is something like less than 0.01 cent in Europe if you have volume), and some banks want to get rid of the exchange, but really the most of the work the exchange does is to offer a technical interface to the clients so they do not have to arrange for one with each other bank they do business with. That is not enough to justify going to a blockchain solution. But what about being able to prove the transfer later? Banks already need to have revision-proof storage for that. Hence both source and target bank can already prove the transfer happened and cannot claim it did not. The blockchain adds absolutely nothing here.

    As it turns out, that pretty much eliminates the "currency" use, except for the case were you want anonymity. But most blockchain-tech does not actually give you that in actual reality. Monero, as a specialty niche solution, does and that is why it may have an actual valid use-case, but only if it eventually gets its volatility under control. As the cryptocurrency-craze very much banks on people that try to get rich, that means speculation and volatility, again making that "currency" actually useless as a currency. What is left? Supply-chain management? Revision-proof storage still has an edge there. Anything else? Not really.

    So this is it basically, except for a few special scenarios, but only ones were volatility and speculation is a severe problem. Hence in general, there is nothing but speculation in here and that invites fraud. The typical ICO is basically a pyramid-scheme and these are illegal for a reason. The disclosure requirements are there for the same reason. And violating them is at the very least preparation for fraud.

    • ICOs are lucky to be low-risk enough to be categorized as "speculative." Be careful using words like "high risk," that is an actual risk category and you might end up with the SEC sniffing around. ;)

      Blockchain adds immutability of a distributed data store. If you're talking about digital currency, that is not nothing. But obviously, it also isn't everything. People who want to do without the source of trust in the center don't really understand why fiat currency has value in the first place. When a digital

      • by gweihir ( 88907 )

        ICOs are lucky to be low-risk enough to be categorized as "speculative." Be careful using words like "high risk," that is an actual risk category and you might end up with the SEC sniffing around. ;)

        The SEC does not concern me. No, not even a bit.

  • DJ Khaled getting busted for cryptocurrency is one of those stories that we'll look back on someday and laugh. I mean, it's probably not a laughing matter for DJ Khaled, but it's pretty funny and really a slice of life in 2018.

    But Ludacris' verse on that DJ Khaled song is fire. It's one for the ages.

    Ludacris goin' in on the verse
    Cause I never been defeated and I won't stop now
    Keep your hands up get 'em in the sky for the homies
    That didn't make it and the folks locked down
    I never went no where
    But they sayi

  • Will people ever learn? No, probably not.

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