Category: SEC Filings

Winklevoss Twins (Of Facebook Fame) To Create A Bitcoin ETF

The Winklevoss Twins, best known for their supporting role in the early Facebook saga, have filed a fascinating registration statement. The Winklevoss Bitcoin Trust has made a filing with the SEC to register around $20 million of Winklevoss Bitcoin Shares.

The point of this investment will be to reflect the performance of the “Blended Bitcoin Price” of Bitcoins. This price is the weighted average market price of Bitcoins on Bitcoin exchanges chosen by the Winklevosses.

The Winklevosses intend for the Trust to hold Bitcoins “using the Trust’s proprietary Security System,” whatever that means for a digital asset.

While this is sort of novel and interesting in its own way, what I found most fascinating is the fact that the financial statements filed with the Form S-1 were blank. Completely blank.

While initial registration statement filings often contain blanks, I’ve never seen “Form of Financial Statements” before. Financial statements may change over the course of a filing history, such as in response to SEC comments. However, it will be interesting to see if the SEC sends the Winklevosses a bedbug letter for this filing.

Best line from The Social Network.

SEC Highlights Warnings About Unregistered Broker-Dealers in Private Oil And Gas Offerings

The SEC is taking notice of private oil and gas offerings and has increased its scrutiny of these deals. They have noted the recent increase in fraud cases for these deals at the federal and state levels. Thus, the SEC has released an Investor Alert for Private Oil and Gas Offerings. And the first thing they recommend to investors approached to invest?

“Is the person recommending the investment registered? Most people offering you securities must be registered as a broker with the SEC and must be a member of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, or FINRA.”

The SEC cautions that being registered is not a seal of approval and that there may be conflicts of interest between the broker-dealer and the issuer.

In a general alert regarding the oil and gas industry, it is not surprising to find the SEC focused on the broker-dealer issue. Many advisors (including this writer) have been approached to sign off on an offering sales arrangement without a licensed broker-dealer with the explanation that:

  • “I do this all the time and it has never been a problem.”
  • “I am not acting as a broker-dealer, just a consultant who gets paid when the investment closes.”

Unfortunately for the would-be commission-eers, the SEC and state securities authorities do not share that analysis.

As the SEC said in the alert:

“If someone who is not registered solicits your investment, that person may be violating the law. One exception from broker registration is available to employees of the company offering the securities and who engage in strictly limited sales activities. If you aren’t consulting a registered broker or adviser, you should consider doing so. A registered broker or adviser that is familiar with the oil and gas industry and not connected to the offering can help you analyze the investment. Most importantly, working with a registered broker or investment adviser affords you certain legal protections.”

The SEC then illustrated benefits of using a licensed professional to assist in the investment decision:

Keep in mind that if the investment opportunity is an outright fraud, the written materials may look legitimate and every question you have about the opportunity may be answered to your satisfaction, but that doesn’t make any of it true. It is important to conduct your own independent research. One good way to do that may be to engage an investment professional specializing in oil and gas.”

It should be instructive to practitioners that in the course of a general industry investor alert, the SEC chose to highlight the risks of dealing with unlicensed broker-dealers. They are still clearly focused on this issue. Although some bad actors promote these deals, hoping to stay under the radar is a bad strategy for the promoter, issuer and investor.

Facebook Hacked!

On Friday afternoon, Facebook announced that hackers had their way with some employee laptops.  It said none of its users’ data was compromised, and that the attack occurred after some employees visited a website that infected their machines with malware.

The writer said that “It was not immediately clear why Facebook waited until now to announce the incident.”  Why, oh why, would a company wait until Friday afternoon to release negative news?  You may also wonder why the government waits until Friday afternoon to release economic news.  So people can spend the weekend absorbing the information over the weekend free from the distractions of work, of course.

Facebook described these risks in its latest Form 10-K:

Computer malware, viruses, hacking and phishing attacks, and spamming could harm our business and results of operations.

Computer malware, viruses, and computer hacking and phishing attacks have become more prevalent in our industry, have occurred on our systems in the past, and may occur on our systems in the future. Because of our prominence, we believe that we are a particularly attractive target for such attacks. Though it is difficult to determine what, if any, harm may directly result from any specific interruption or attack, any failure to maintain performance, reliability, security, and availability of our products and technical infrastructure. Any such failure may harm our reputation and our ability to retain existing users and attract new users.

In addition, spammers attempt to use our products to send targeted and untargeted spam messages to users, which may embarrass or annoy users and make Facebook less user-friendly. We cannot be certain that the technologies and employees that we have to attempt to defeat spamming attacks will be able to eliminate all spam messages from being sent on our platform. As a result of spamming activities, our users may use Facebook less or stop using our products altogether.

The SEC has been focusing on disclosure of cybersecurity risks.  Here is the release, which is exactly as exciting as it sounds.