On October 25, 2018, the Conference of State Bank Supervisors (CSBS) filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia challenging the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency's (OCC) creation of a new national bank charter for nonbank companies, which would include FinTech companies (the Nonbank Charter Program). See Conference of State Bank Supervisors v. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, Case 1:18-cv-02449-DLF (D.D.C. Oct. 25, 2018).
In the complaint, the CSBS alleges that nonbank institutions-including FinTech companies-have been subject to ...
On October 22, 2018, the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York granted Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba's application for a preliminary injunction against cryptocurrency startup Alibabacoin Foundation. The preliminary injunction entered in Alibaba Grp. Holding Ltd. v. Alibabacoin Found., No. 18 Civ. 2897, 2018 WL 5118638 (S.D.N.Y. Oct. 22, 2018) bars Alibabacoin Foundation from using Alibaba's protected marks to promote its novel cryptocurrency known as AlibabaCoin or Alibaba Coin.
Alibaba alleged that the defendants, a group of Dubai- and ...
On October 3, 2018, the Securities and Exchange Commission sued Blockvest LLC and its founder Reginald Buddy Ringgold, III for falsely claiming that its initial coin offering had been approved by the SEC. The complaint, filed in the United States District Court for the Southern District of California, Case No. 18-CV-2287-GPC, sought a return of improperly obtained funds as well as a temporary restraining order to "halt the fraudulent offer and sale of unregistered securities" by Blockvest and to freeze the assets of both Blockvest and Ringgold.
The SEC's complaint alleges that ...
In Commodity Futures Trading Commission v. My Big Coin Pay, Inc., --- F. Supp. 3d ---, 2018 WL 4621727 (D. Mass. Sept. 26, 2018), the Massachusetts District Court determined that the Commodity Futures Trading Commission ("CFTC") sufficiently alleged the virtual currency known as My Big Coin ("MBC") is a commodity and denied the defendants' motion to dismiss.
The CFTC alleged that the defendants "enticed customers to buy [MBC]," a virtual currency, "by making various untrue and/or misleading statements and omitting material facts." 2018 WL 4621727, at *1. Specifically, the CFTC ...