Crypto investors out-settle SEC, snag $27.5M from Block.one over EOS

Block.one quietly laid rest to a class action lawsuit over its year-long EOS sale this past week. The company agreed to hand $27.5 million to crypto investors Johnny Hong and the so-called Crypto Assets Opportunity Fund.

That’s $3.5 million more than what Block.one paid to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in 2019.

Hong’s lawsuit (filed in 2020) stated that EOS — along with Block.one’s executive leadership and board — were “highly centralized” and the tech was “not superior to the other blockchains already in use.”

The suit also argued multi-billion dollar Block.one “generate[d] demand for, and inflate[d] the price of… EOS.”

Block.one fired back, stating it “believes this lawsuit was without merit and filled with numerous inaccuracies” in a brief press release.

Block.one didn’t say much about its settlement with a small group crypto investors who’d bought EOS.

In 2019, the SEC wrestled just $24 million out of Block.one for failing to register its securities sale with regulators.

Crypto investors keep low profile

The case’s two plaintiffs are mysterious and relatively quiet crypto investors. Hong seems to be only known for the class action lawsuit against Block.one.

The other is Crypto Assets Opportunity Fund, formed with $100,000 in 2017.

A single devoted page for Victoria Capital Management simply says the vehicle is “a long-only digital assets hedge fund.”

Running Victoria Capital Management is Brandon Elsasser. His personal website states he “never expected to become an author but now, without a doubt he is one.”

Yep, Elsasser published a book last year, a fiction-memoir hybrid called Once More Without Feeling. Elsasser released it two months after the lawsuit took shape.

“… Brandon Elsasser tells the sordid story of a millionaire willing to burn down his whole world for a chance at true love,” reads the Amazon blurb.

“Journey with Brandon as his deft and capable mind and his carefully constructed world are upended by a fiery love that rearranges his picket-fence life.”

*Once More Without Feeling* is a “financial trader’s candid tale of love, loss, and what come of trading one life for another.”

Nonetheless, Block.one claims it settled with crypto investors Hong and Victoria Capital so it can “focus more time and energy on running [the] business.”

Block.one recently raised funds from major players like Peter Thiel to launch a $10 billion crypto exchange called Bullish.

The company is also in the process of transitioning its purportedly decentralized social media network Voice into an NFT-centric platform.