Veritaseum

Rug Pull

Infrastructure · $VERI · ✝ 2017

An ICO the SEC called fraud, with manipulated trading.

Veritaseum was Reggie Middleton's VERI token ICO pitched as peer-to-peer financial infrastructure, raising roughly $11M in 2017. The SEC charged it in 2019 as a fraudulent unregistered securities offering involving manipulative trading, leading to a settlement.

Peak: ~$11M raised
Cause: Rug Pull
Year of death: 2017

☠️ Cause of death

The SEC found the offering was an unregistered securities fraud with misrepresentations and manipulative trading, resulting in a settlement.

📓 Lessons left behind

—Grand infrastructure promises rarely match a thin product.
—Self-traded tokens can mask manufactured demand.
—Unregistered securities offerings invite SEC enforcement.

🌱 The idea that survived

Securities-law clarity

Contributed to SEC precedent clarifying that many ICO tokens are securities.

#ico#securities-fraud#sec