The Securities and Exchange Commission charged Stoner Cats 2 LLC with conducting an unregistered offering of nonfungible tokens that brought in $8 million from investors.
The move is the latest action brought by the agency against an NFT project after similar charges involving Impact Theory last month.
“Regardless of whether your offering involves beavers, chinchillas or animal-based NFTs, under the federal securities laws, it’s the economic reality of the offering – not the labels you put on it or the underlying objects – that guides the determination of what’s an investment contract and therefore a security,” Gurbir S. Grewal, the SEC’s director of its enforcement division, said in a statement on Wednesday.
Ashton Kutcher, Jane Fonda
Stoner Cats was one of the first television shows to be fully funded by NFTs. The show follows a family of cats voiced by several well-known names including Ashton Kutcher, Jane Fonda, Chris Rock, and even Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin.
Stoner Cats 2 did not admit or deny the SEC’s findings and agreed to pay $1 million and destroy all NFTs in its possession.
A total of 10,420 unique NFTs were created based on the characters in the show, according to the project’s website. They were minted and sold in July of 2021. The first six episodes were accessible only to holders of the NFTs.
Source: The Block
