{"id":67401,"date":"2022-09-20T10:16:33","date_gmt":"2022-09-20T07:16:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/?p=67401"},"modified":"2025-09-07T06:26:25","modified_gmt":"2025-09-07T03:26:25","slug":"sec-accuses-youtube-blogger-ian-balina-of-involvement-in-unregistered-ico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/sec-accuses-youtube-blogger-ian-balina-of-involvement-in-unregistered-ico\/","title":{"rendered":"SEC accuses YouTube blogger Ian Balina of involvement in unregistered ICO"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) <a href=\"https:\/\/www.docdroid.net\/ObMjm8S\/ian-balina-unregistered-securities-offeroooor-pdf#page=21\">has accused<\/a> crypto investor and YouTube blogger Ian Balina of involvement in an unregistered ICO Sparkster.<\/p>\n<p>The project positioned itself as a &#8216;no-code&#8217; development platform. It closed its crowdsale in July 2018 and raised $30 million from participants.<\/p>\n<p>According to court documents, in 2018 Balina promoted SPRK tokens that were securities. He did not disclose the $5 million advertising compensation he received, and also resold the project&#8217;s tokens through his own investment pool without registration with the SEC.<\/p>\n<p>The allegations relate to promoting Sparkster on YouTube and Telegram.<\/p>\n<p>The regulator intends to permanently bar Balina from participating in securities offerings or their promotion, and to seize all income he earned from advertising the project. In addition, the defendant could be liable for a monetary penalty.<\/p>\n<p>Moreover, the SEC noted in the complaint that transactions on the blogger&#8217;s Ethereum wallet were processed by nodes located in the United States and, accordingly, fell under the regulator&#8217;s jurisdiction. According to <a href=\"https:\/\/etherscan.io\/nodetracker\">Etherscan<\/a>, more than 46% of Ethereum nodes are located in the United States.<\/p>\n<p>In June 2019 Balina pleaded guilty to promoting Sparkster.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"500\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">1\/ I&#8217;ve shared my thoughts on Sparkster on YouTube. <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/search?q=%24SPRK&#038;src=ctag&#038;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">$SPRK<\/a> has taught me no research system is perfect, there will always be mistakes. It&#8217;s humbling having to make opinions publicly. People only remember your last win. People like having someone to blame when they lose money.<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Ian Balina (@DiaryofaMadeMan) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/DiaryofaMadeMan\/status\/1138406758626582528?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">June 11, 2019<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<div class=\"wp-block-text-wrappers-update-2 article_update\"><time class=\"gtb_text-wrappers_update_time\">September 20, 2022 | 13:02<\/time><span class=\"gtb_text-wrappers_update_head\">Update: <\/span><\/p>\n<p>In the context of the settlement, Sparkster and its chief executive Sajjad Dayya will pay more than $35 million to affected investors.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>Not admitting or denying the SEC&#8217;s findings, Sparkster agreed to destroy its remaining tokens, request delisting SPRK from trading platforms and publish the SEC order on its website and in social media,<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Dayya also agreed not to participate in ICOs for the next five years.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>In 2018 Ian Balina fell victim to scammers. During a live stream on his YouTube channel, unknown attackers drained more than $2 million from his accounts in various cryptocurrencies. The blogger stored private and public keys in Evernote.<\/p>\n<p>In August, the SEC filed a lawsuit against the <a href=\"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/news\/sec-sues-dragonchain-ico-organizers-for-14-million\">organizers of the Dragonchain ICO<\/a> for $14 million.<\/p>\n<p>Follow ForkLog&#8217;s Bitcoin news on our <a href=\"https:\/\/telegram.me\/forklog\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Telegram<\/a> \u2014 cryptocurrency news, prices and analytics.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has accused crypto investor and YouTube blogger Ian Balina of involvement in an unregistered Sparkster ICO.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":67402,"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":[1162,319,128,1103],"class_list":["post-67401","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-and-analysis","tag-court-cases","tag-ico","tag-sec","tag-youtube"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"views":"23","promo_type":"1","layout_type":"1","short_excerpt":"","is_update":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67401","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67401"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67401\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":67403,"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67401\/revisions\/67403"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/67402"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67401"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67401"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67401"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}