On July 10, 2019, the Securities and Exchange Commission declared Blockstack PBC’s offering statement “qualified”, thus allowing Blockstack to commence the distribution and sale of its Stacks Tokens under Regulation A. This is the first offering of digital tokens to be qualified by the Commission under Regulation A, a significant milestone for the blockchain industry which raised billions of dollars in 2016-2018 in unregistered non-exempt initial coin offerings before the Commission threw down the gauntlet…

Non-accredited investors are estimated to constitute approximately 92% of the U.S. population. Yet restrictive rules governing exempt offerings have significantly limited their freedom to invest in private offerings and prevented or discouraged issuers from selling them privately offered securities. But in a recently issued concept release, the Securities and Exchange Commission has signaled a willingness to approach the issue in a much more creative way, suggesting the possibility of expanded opportunities for companies to…

The Securities and Exchange Commission filed a complaint last week against the founder of venture-backed mobile payments startup Jumio, Inc., charging him with causing the company to prepare false and misleading financial statements that inflated the company’s earnings and gross margins and with defrauding secondary market purchasers of his shares. The founder, Daniel Mattes, agreed to pay more than $16 million in disgorgement and prejudgment interest plus a $640,000 penalty and to be barred from…

Lyft, Inc. last week completed its highly anticipated initial public offering, raising over $2.3 billion at a valuation of approximately $25 billion, and turning its co-founders Logan Green and John Zimmer into near billionaires on paper. But that’s not the only reason they’re smiling. Despite owning only 7% of the outstanding pre-IPO shares, Green and Zimmer will control nearly 50% of the voting power by virtue of their Class B shares having 20 votes per…

2018 was a historically good year for venture capital in the United States in terms of dollars invested by VC funds in U.S. companies, dollars raised by VC funds and dollar value of exits by VC-backed companies, according to the Venture Monitor for Q4 2018 published by PitchBook and the National Venture Capital Association. VC funds invested over $130 billion in over 8,000 portfolio companies in the U.S., limited partners committed $56 billion to 256 new American…

Real estate developers should seriously consider equity crowdfunding to fund development projects for two major reasons, one of which has little or nothing to do with money. The first reason is that new securities offering legislation enacted in 2012 creates new legal capital raising pathways which allow developers for the first time to use the internet to find investors, and also to raise money from non-accredited investors. The second reason is that a crowdfunding campaign can be…

On December 19, 2018, the Securities and Exchange Commission issued final rules to permit reporting companies under the Securities Exchange Act to offer securities under Regulation A (affectionately referred to often as Regulation A+), as mandated by the Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Act of 2018.  The rule amendments also provide that so long as an issuer is current in its Exchange Act reporting, its periodic Regulation A reporting obligation will be deemed to be…