{"id":46557,"date":"2021-07-22T19:57:49","date_gmt":"2021-07-22T16:57:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/?p=46557"},"modified":"2025-09-01T17:01:36","modified_gmt":"2025-09-01T14:01:36","slug":"investors-allege-dfinity-foundation-sold-unregistered-securities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/investors-allege-dfinity-foundation-sold-unregistered-securities\/","title":{"rendered":"Investors allege DFINITY Foundation sold unregistered securities"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The nonprofit DFINITY Foundation, behind the development of the Internet Computer ecosystem, has faced a class-action lawsuit from investors accusing it of selling unregistered securities disguised as ICP tokens.<\/p>\n<p>California resident Daniel Ocampo filed the complaint \u201con behalf of all investors who purchased Internet Computer tokens on May 10, 2021 or thereafter\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>DFINITY founder Dominic Williams, venture firm Polychain Capital and hedge fund Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) are also named as defendants in the filing. The latter two entities were early investors in the project.<\/p>\n<p>ICP trading began in early May. After the Mercury genesis block of the network was launched, the native token appeared on exchange listings <a href=\"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/news\/coinbase-pro-to-list-icp-token-from-dfinitys-internet-computer-network\">Coinbase Pro<\/a>, Binance, FTX, Huobi and OKEx. On its first day of trading it <a href=\"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/news\/dfinitys-icp-token-enters-top-7-by-market-capitalization-after-trading-begins\">entered the top-7 by market capitalization<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Ocampo alleges that more than 469,213,710 ICP tokens issued under this process were literally \u201ccreated out of thin air\u201d and sold in violation of <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Securities_Act_of_1933\">\u0417\u0430\u043a\u043e\u043d\u0430 \u043e \u0446\u0435\u043d\u043d\u044b\u0445 \u0431\u0443\u043c\u0430\u0433 1933 \u0433\u043e\u0434\u0430<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>According to the lead plaintiff, investors were sold tokens on the premise that they were investing in a joint venture and could expect future profits dependent on the success of Internet Computer.<\/p>\n<p>The filing also states that 24% of the current ICP supply was allocated to the defendants, with the lion\u2019s share of these assets distributed between Polychain Capital and a16z.<\/p>\n<p>After the Genesis block launch, ICP traded around $475, but over the course of the month its price fell by 90%, according to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.coingecko.com\/ru\/%D0%9A%D1%80%D0%B8%D0%BF%D1%82%D1%BE%D0%B2%D0%B0%D0%BB%D1%8E%D1%82%D1%8B\/internet-computer\">CoinGecko<\/a>. At the time of writing the asset price was $34.9.<\/p>\n<p>< figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"471\" src=\"https:\/\/forklog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/icp-1-1024x471.png\" alt=\"Investors accuse DFINITY Foundation of selling unregistered securities\" class=\"wp-image-143402\" srcset=\"https:\/\/forklog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/icp-1-1024x471.png 1024w, https:\/\/forklog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/icp-1-300x138.png 300w, https:\/\/forklog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/icp-1-768x353.png 768w, https:\/\/forklog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/icp-1-1536x706.png 1536w, https:\/\/forklog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/icp-1.png 1828w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><figcaption>ICP\/USDT chart on Binance. Data: <a href=\"https:\/\/ru.tradingview.com\/symbols\/ICPUSDT\/?exchange=BINANCE\">TradingView<\/a>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>In late June Arkham Intelligence analysts <a href=\"https:\/\/arkhamintelligence.com\/icp\/report.pdf\">released<\/a> a report in which they described such a price plunge as highly unusual for a project with such large investments.<\/p>\n<p>Analysts also found that around $2 billion worth of ICP tokens were moved to cryptocurrency exchanges by \u201clikely insider addresses.\u201d Those transactions coincided with a noticeable price drop.<\/p>\n<p>On May 25, 2021, the DFINITY Foundation <a href=\"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/news\/dfinity-launches-developer-funding-program-worth-223-million\">launched a program to fund the development of the Internet Computer ecosystem<\/a>. Grants to developers totaled more than $223 million.<\/p>\n<p> <a title=\"View CA Sup Mto 21-Civ-03843 Complaint on Scribd\" href=\"https:\/\/www.scribd.com\/document\/516869598\/CA-Sup-Mto-21-Civ-03843-Complaint#from_embed\" style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">CA Sup Mto 21-Civ-03843 Complaint<\/a> by <a title=\"View ForkLog's profile on Scribd\" href=\"https:\/\/www.scribd.com\/user\/456422024\/ForkLog#from_embed\" style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">ForkLog<\/a> on Scribd<\/p>\n<p>Read ForkLog&#8217;s Bitcoin news in our <a href=\"\/\/telegram.me\/forklog\" target=\"\u201c_blank\u201d\" rel=\"\u201cnofollow\u201d noopener\">Telegram<\/a> \u2014 cryptocurrency news, prices and analytics.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The nonprofit DFINITY Foundation, behind the Internet Computer ecosystem, faced a class-action lawsuit by investors alleging it sold unregistered securities disguised as ICP tokens.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":46558,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"select":"1","news_style_id":"1","cryptorium_level":"","_short_excerpt_text":"","creation_source":"","_metatest_mainpost_news_update":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[848,847,849,27],"class_list":["post-46557","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-and-analysis","tag-andreessen-horowitz","tag-dfinity","tag-polychain-capital","tag-russia"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"views":"27","promo_type":"1","layout_type":"1","short_excerpt":"","is_update":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46557","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46557"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46557\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46559,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46557\/revisions\/46559"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46558"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46557"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46557"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46557"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}