The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is now investigating companies and individuals for possibly violating securities laws through initial coin offerings (ICO), or token sales, of cryptocurrency. The SEC reportedly issued “dozens” of subpoenas and information requests to determine how sales and pre-sales of ICOs work given they don’t follow the same rules that regulate initial public offerings (IPOs) to protect investors.
An IPO, or Initial Public Offering, is when a privately held company goes public with its stock. Companies take this route to become publicly traded on the stock market, or to generate funds to expand their footprint. Meanwhile, companies use an ICO to raise funds for a new cryptocurrency business or platform. Investors use legal tender or digital coins to purchase a percentage of the new cryptocurrency in return for digital tokens, financially fueling the platform.
Yet it’s the procedure ICOs use that may be generating government involvement. It’s similar to how developers raise money to create games by selling an “early access” token on digital platforms, like Steam, to fund the project. ICOs are listed as “software presale tokens,” and use descriptors such as “crowdsale” or “donation” instead of the ICO term to escape federal regulation.
But the SEC is catching on, and is now grilling companies that sold digital coins to raise funds, and the lawyers and advisory firms that help with sales. The SEC began demanding information last year, and then rolled out around 80 subpoenas over the last three months to companies and what the SEC calls gatekeepers: individuals who help the sale of ICOs.
According to the SEC, virtual currencies should be listed as securities and registered with regulators. Jay Clayton, chairman of the SEC, believes many “promoters” of ICOs and cryptocurrencies simply aren’t complying with securities laws. He asked the agency in January to change that.
“Market professionals, especially gatekeepers, need to act responsibly and hold themselves to high standards,” Clayton said. “To be blunt, from what I have seen recently, particularly in the initial coin offering space, they can do better.”
The subpoenas request information about sold cryptocurrencies, how companies market token sales, and the identities of individuals who purchased those tokens. The subpoenas were distributed across multiple cities including Boston, New York, and San Francisco. Unnamed sources who viewed the subpoenas didn’t indicate if an additional wave of subpoenas is on the way to digital coin investors.
“Generally, subpoenas are the guided missiles of SEC enforcement actions,” says Aaron Kaplan, a securities attorney and co-founder of Prometheum. “There’s going to be a big reckoning for those who have operated outside the federal securities laws, with more SEC enforcement actions and criminal prosecutions in the near future.”
Online retailer Overstock took a nosedive on the stock market Thursday after disclosing in a regulatory filing that it’s currently under investigation by the SEC over its cryptocurrency exchange subsidiary tZero. The company raised $100 million from its ICO alone, and another $150 million to expand its blockchain-based trading system. Overstock must now provide documents related to the ICO and its tokens.
Speech-to-text apps have flooded the App Store, making it easier than ever to type on our Macs with just our voice. I have previously covered one such app called TypeWhisper. However, there has been a dearth of good text-to-speech models, and most of the good ones are locked behind a subscription.
Ollama, an open-source app that lets you run local AI models on your computer, wants to change that. It works on macOS, Windows, and Linux, and your prompts are never stored or used for training.
Did you think hitting delete on your AI chatbot conversation actually makes it disappear? Georgia Tech researchers just proved that's not entirely true. They have built a forensic tool called ORISA that can dig deleted conversations from your phone and even rebuild them into a working chatbot session you can keep talking to.
How can ORISA bring deleted AI conversations back?
Touchscreen laptops have been around for years. You can get them in all sizes and shapes. Just not from Apple. For years, the Cupertino giant has treated the idea of a touchscreen MacBook the way I treat a meeting that could have been an email: with open contempt. However, Wednesday looks like the day the company could finally change its mind.
The latest Apple invite puts the “Pro and Tell” showcase in Los Angeles at 10 a.m. PT (1 p.m. ET) on October 28, 2026. Instead of a regular live-streamed keynote, it is an invitation-only, hands-on event for a handful of press and creators (similar to what the company did for the MacBook Neo earlier this year).