The Texas State Securities Board (TSSB) was prolific in shutting down scammers and illegal crypto projects in late 2018 and it’s ramping up operations as Bitcoin hits the mainstream media once more. Towards the end of 2018, the TSSB issued an overwhelming number of cease and desist orders against companies that were operating without the correct licenses or were using the incorrect wording, and it’s looking to carry on where it left off. This past week, the TSSB issued three cease and desist orders to unlicensed businesses soliciting the public to invest into crypto markets – a bad move in the Lone Star State.
Taking Down the Scammers
First up on the TSSB’s hit list was a scam from India known as TintXMining. It promised to turn $5,100 into $213,000 over the course of three weeks – a claim that’s virtually impossible to substantiate. TintXMining was not licensed to operate in Texas, despite what sales reps and marketing material said. In late 2018, we saw the TSSB issue a similar cease and desist order to My Crypto Mine. My Crypto Mine was promising investors a bumper 20% return guaranteed every month if they invested into the project. However, it was nothing more than a scam.
It’s not just scammers that the TSSB are after; we also saw the TSSB take down a cloud mining firm that is allegedly legitimate. AWS Mining PTY LTD was hit with a cease and desist order for selling mining contracts in the state, an activity which it’s not currently licensed for in the state. Most cloud mining firms use geo-blocking to prevent people from jurisdictions like Texas from being able to see the website and platform – projecting themselves from these types of cases.
Could Texas Become the Home of Crypto?
If you look past the green mining initiative that virtually all crypto miners are trying to push, Texas could very easily become the crypto mining hub of the world. Thanks to its huge oil fields and increasing production levels, there is a massive abundance of natural gas. Usually this gas if burnt in a process called flaring, but it’s wasteful and harmful to the environment. Earlier this year, Winklevoss Capital invested into a firm that produces mobile crypto mining rigs that can capture this waste gas and burn it to create electricity – rather than burning it for a pretty flame. If these rigs are set up at every single oil well across the state, we could see a huge amount of hash rate coming from natural gas – preventing the gas from being burnt with no gains.
Texas is continuing to clean up its crypto scene ahead of sweeping national crypto regulations, so scammers better watch out. Retail investors are rather easy to scam owing to their lack of financial acumen, meaning the world is full of them. The TSSB is helping to make America safer one cease and desist order at a time.
