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App developer Abra, based in Mountain View, California, and affiliated Philippines firm Plutus Technologies agreed to pay $150,000 to settle charges that they violated securities laws by offering and selling security-based swaps to retail investors without registration and failed to transact those swaps on a registered national exchange, according to the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Abra developed and owns an app that allows users to bet on price movements of U.S.-listed equity securities, according to an SEC order filed Monday. Using the app, investors were able to enter into contracts providing synthetic exposure to price movements of stocks and exchange-traded fund shares trading in the U.S. via blockchain-based financial transactions with Abra or Plutus, the SEC says.
The firms agreed to the SEC settlement without admitting or denying the findings in the order, the regulator said.
"This case highlights the confluence of two current trends in the securities markets: offshore companies accessing US capital markets and the ease with which smartphone apps enable retail participation in those same markets," Nick Morgan, a partner in the litigation department at law firm Paul Hastings in Los Angeles, told ThinkAdvisor in an email. "Here the SEC is signaling that it will apply federal securities laws to both of those trends even in the absence of allegations of fraudulent conduct."
Asked for comment, Lomesh Dutta, Abra's vice president of growth, only referred ThinkAdvisor to a tweet sent by Bill Barhydt, Abra CEO and founder, Monday afternoon that did not mention the settlement and SEC claims: "Abra's business is doing very well with our loyal US users leading the way. We have users in 100 countries with people making $ millions in deposits via bank, stablecoin, #Bitcoin, credit card and over 50 other cryptocurrencies. Stay tuned for some awesome product announcements!"
