The Securities and Exchange Commission has launched a bogus initial coin offering website to educate investors about scams.
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The website, HoweyCoins.com, has testimonials and messages from what appear to be celebrity promoters to entice investors to buy a cryptocurrency.
“The rapid growth of the ‘ICO’ market, and its widespread promotion as a new investment opportunity, has provided fertile ground for bad actors to take advantage of our Main Street investors,” SEC Chairman Jay Clayton said in a statement. The HoweyCoins website is named after a landmark 1946 Supreme Court decision, SEC v. W.J. Howey Co., which determined that certain transactions qualified as investment contracts.
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