The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission announced Tuesday it has obtained a court order to halt what is likely the largest initial coin offering ever.
The complaint was filed in Dallas, Texas, on Thursday and unsealed late Monday. It said Dallas-based AriseBank "used social media, a celebrity endorsement, and other wide dissemination tactics to raise what it claims to be $600 million of its $1 billion goal in just two months."
The SEC alleges AriseBank "falsely stated that it purchased [a Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation]-insured bank which enabled it to offer customers FDIC-insured accounts."
AriseBank calls itself a "decentralized bank" and announced Thursday it was correcting an announcement made the prior week about the acquisition of an FDIC-insured bank. Two websites for AriseBank were unavailable Tuesday morning.
On January 18, AriseBank issued a press release titled, "AriseBank™ Announces First-Ever Acquisition Of Traditional Banks By A Crypto Platform Expects ICO To Exceed $1B Due To Popular Demand," and would like to clarify the statements about the acquisition of KFMC and TPBG, and the FDIC status.
Press release from 25th January:
AriseBank is a decentralized, peer-to-peer banking platform that allows users of its software to serve as their own bank. Arise gives people the freedom to hold, send, receive, buy, sell and spend cryptocurrency directly from their computer or mobile device. This means that AriseBank cannot and will not ever control the money of its users. People maintain their own stock of cryptocurrency holdings and any user may hold, send, receive, buy, sell and spend them, when needed.
Because of the decentralized nature of the AriseBank software, it is wholly unnecessary for the platform to be FDIC regulated or insured as the individual users maintain full control of their funds. The company is currently in the process of acquiring two U.S.-based companies, KFMC Bank Holding Company and TPMG. KFMC Bank Holding Company is the owner of a 100-year old US commercial bank and TPMG is a 25-year old investment bank. The name of the actual FDIC-insured bank being acquired will be announced once all paperwork has been filed with the FDIC and regulators have approved its status.
"Transparency is a trait that we take great pride in at AriseBank," said Jared Rice, Sr., Co-Founder and CEO, AriseBank. "We want to ensure that our customers and the public understand clearly that we are not FDIC regulated, although we are in the process of acquiring an FDIC-insured bank. This entity is totally separate from AriseBank and will operate separately from AriseBank. AriseBank will never offer FDIC-insured accounts to our users, as this is not possible with a decentralized software. Although we believe there is a way for both companies to work together in the future. The companies cited as "banks" in the January 18 announcement were instead bank holding firms that are being acquired in the deal. We hope this will help clarify the nature of what we are doing and the vision we have for the future of banking as a whole."