Former action movie star and current alleged rapist Steven Seagal has endorsed a suspicious cryptocurrency venture known as Bitcoiin (yes, with two “i”s) 2Gen. What could go wrong.
What is Bitcoiin 2Gen? It’s hard to say, since the coin itself is currently undergoing its Initial Coin Offering (ICO) crowdsale and does not yet exist. Still, the venture’s whitepaper describes itself as better than Bitcoin in almost every way, and the website claims it will support “10x lower transaction costs” and “2x-3x times (sic) more” mining revenue—without providing any technical details to support these claims.
Whatever they figured out about coin transactions must have been good enough for Kurt Russel’s Executive Decision co-star. The Securities and Exchange Commission, however, cautioned investors about sinking money into potentially unlawful, celebrity-backed ICOs back in November.
“If you have missed the chance of jumping on board with the original Bitcoin back in 2009,” the paper claims, using questionable hard-sale tactics and unsteady grammar, “here is the opportunity where life does give the second chance.” Ironically, this “rebooted” Bitcoin is built on top of Ethereum, a rival crypto paradigm.
How could anyone—let alone the 9 million+ investors claimed on the B2G website—get roped into investing in a venture so thin on details? The potential for huge payouts, of course. The B2G ICO sports a “4 level commission structure” with increasing rewards for each tier. Something tells me that, if we were to visualize this scheme, it might look a bit like a pyramid.
There are 34 days left in Bitcoiin 2Gen’s ICO. It’ll be a wonder if they don’t get a letter from the SEC before then.
Update 3/9/18 12:00pm ET: The New Jersey Bureau of Securities drafted and sent a cease and desist order to the operators of Bitcoiin earlier this week, claiming the company’s ICO constituted an unregulated sale of a security. In recent months, these state-level orders have precipitated action on the part of federal regulators like the SEC and CFTC, often in the form of fraud charges.
While many letters like this one have been sent to a multitude of dubious cryptocurrency-based companies, we can confidently report none prior have thrown into question “Hollywood actor, director, producer and martial artis” Steven Seagal’s competency regarding “compliance with federal and state securities laws.”